Books
Sana Amin
July 18, 2020
Dennis Brutus - Cultural Section Dennis Brutus,
"It was inevitable that his life story would eventually be told. Brutus's life is woven so tightly into the fabric of modern South African history."
Dennis Brutus (1924-2009) lived in Port Elizabeth in the Eastern Cape during the first half of the twentieth century. His identity was mixed with different races: Dutch, German, Malaysian, and African. He registered his identity as “coloured,” and lived most of his life during the turbulent period with the apartheid regime. A legally codified system of racial segregation and discrimination was launched in South Africa in 1948, followed by the development of a ruthless state apparatus designed to systematically eliminate any resistance.
In these bleak circumstances Brutus found himself as a student, teacher, poet, journalist, and anti-apartheid activist in all these roles. However, despite his great influence, he never published any autobiographical work, attributing his reluctance to begin writing them to his belief that there was no coherent account of his life. "I have failed to see in my life any kind of coherence, pattern, or unifying thread that justifies an autobiography," he wrote in a letter to a friend in the mid-1970s. "It seems to me that autobiographies need to organize one's knowledge of life in such a way as to show some pattern, some kind of clarity."
He was sent into exile on Robben Island for 16 months, five of which were in solitary confinement, and was in the cell next to Nelson Mandela.
However, when University of Texas academic Hal Willey approached him in 1988, with the aim of working with him on writing an autobiography, he was more amenable to the idea. He tried to convince Brutus that a biography would be better than an academic work on his life, as it would enrich it with poetic and literary language, and could focus on existential details, memories, and personal aspects that would not be appropriate for a formal biography, but would be more humanly interesting.
Willie then told Brutus that his life was closely linked to the rise of apartheid and, at the same time, offered “a new way of looking at the struggle against apartheid”. He drew particular attention to Port Elizabeth and the Eastern Cape as key sites of this conflict.
Despite his reservations about writing a full biography, Brutus began working with Willy on a rough draft. The effort was tentatively titled "Biography of a South African Troubadour" and the draft was based on tapes made by the poet, but Willie says "as we reached adolescence and adulthood Brutus cried out that he would answer no more questions" and the biography was halted.
11 years after his passing, the South African researcher Tyrone August, professor of English literature, returns to write a biography of the first four decades of Brutus’ life in a book recently published by HSRC Press under the title “Denis Brutus: The South African Years.” In the book, he returns to his lyric poetry as one One of the most prominent poets of his generation, and the role he played as a human rights activist in mobilizing and intensifying opposition to injustice and oppression, initially in South Africa, but he later expanded his activity to various issues in different regions of the world as well.
This book focuses on the life of Dennis Brutus in South Africa from his childhood until he went into exile in Britain with an exit permit in 1966, which meant that he could never return home as long as the apartheid regime was in power. He continued to fight racism wherever he went, whether in Britain or in the United States. The United States, which he later moved to.
The biography is also more of an attempt to acknowledge Brutus's literary and political work, and in a sense, as the author says, "an attempt to bring Brutus back to South Africa," as this book puts Brutus's voice in as he tells the story of his life in Willie's forgotten tapes and through articles he published in newspapers and magazines, interviews, and court records. And correspondence.
Auguste relies heavily on archival material not yet in the public domain, as well as on interviews he conducted with many people who interacted with Brutus during his early years in South Africa.
The author pays particular attention to his involvement in some of the most influential organizations of his time, including the South African Teachers' Association, the Colored Affairs Management Movement, the National Coloureds' Congress, the Coordinating Committee for International Recognition in Sport, the South African Sports Association and the Non-Racial Olympic Committee in South Africa. Africa, which Brutus essentially united to wage a collective campaign against racism in sport in South Africa including a campaign to ban it from the Olympics.
The story began in 1963, when Brutus was arrested for trying to meet an International Olympic Committee official. He was accused of violating the terms of his movement restriction, as he was not allowed to meet more than two people outside his family. He was sentenced to 18 months in prison. He was out on bail and then attempted to leave South Africa to attend an International Olympic Committee meeting in Baden in West Germany. While in Mozambique on a false passport, he was arrested and returned to South Africa.
There, while trying to escape, he was shot in the back and sent into exile to Robben Island for 16 months, five of which were in solitary confinement. He was in the cell next to Nelson Mandela, and when his campaign succeeded and South Africa was banned from participating in the Tokyo Olympics in 1964, Brutus was in prison. He did not know until after he left that he had succeeded in his endeavors.
Among his most prominent poetry collections are: “Sirens, Knuckles and Boots,” “Letters to Martha and Other Poems from a South African Prison,” “Poems from Algeria,” “Simple Lust,” “China Poems,” “Stubborn Hope,” and "Salute and blame" and others.
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