DENNIS BRUTUS (1924-2009):

 SOUTH AFRICAN POET AND FREEDOM FIGHTER PDF

Read other columns on Africa here 

The author spent six weeks in Southern Africa in 2009

 By Nick Gier, Professor Emeritus, University of Idaho (nickgier@roadrunner.com)

Let us work together that my dream may be fulfilled
that I may return with my people out of exile
to live in one democracy in peace.
Is not my dream a noble one worthy to stand
beside freedom struggles everywhere?

--Dennis Brutus 1975

          In his autobiography Long Walk to Freedom Nelson Mandela describes a new arrival at the notorious prison on Robben Island: "Dennis Brutus, a colored political activist, was a poet and writer from Port Elizabeth imprisoned for violating his bans." In ruthlessly segregated South Africa, "colored" meant mixed race rather than black African.  Descended from Africans, French, and Italians, Brutus died at the age of 85 on December 26, 2009. 

          When I was in Cape Town last September, I waited patiently every day for a chance to visit Robben Island, now a popular tourist destination, but bad weather kept the ferries in their docks. No prisoner was ever able to escape from this infamous hell hole, seven miles out in one of the most beautiful harbors in the world.  During the anti-apartheid period, the colored wardens at the prison were replaced by white Afrikaners, who were instructed to make the inmates' lives as miserable as possible. Today former prisoners are the proud guides at Robben Island.

           For 18 months in 1964-65 Dennis Brutus occupied the cell next to Mandela's. Every day Mandela, Brutus, and other inmates were trucked out to a rock quarry where they broke stones with 14-pound mallets. Apartheid's insane rules applied even prison: black prisoners had to wear shorts, to remind them, as Mandela says, that "we were ‘boys.'" Blacks were allowed shoes (normally only sandals were issued) but no socks.  Whites, coloreds, and Indians were issued shoes, socks, and trousers.  Ever proactive, Mandela campaigned successfully for long pants for black prisoners.

           Dennis Brutus graduated from Fort Hare University, founded by Christian missionaries, where Mandela was also a student and Desmond Tutu was a chaplain.  Mandela received his law degree from the University of Witwatersrand, but Brutus' law studies there were suspended when he was arrested for anti-apartheid activities.

          Although never an athlete himself, Brutus enjoyed high school coaching. While taking refuge in Brutus' home, Mandela, an amateur heavy weight boxer, taught Brutus' two sons the sport. In 1962, while prohibited from participating in any political activities, Brutus nonetheless helped found the South African Non-Racial Olympic Committee and led a successful campaign to ban South African athletes from the 1964 and 1968 Olympic Games. In 1970 his organization succeeded in removing South Africa from the Olympic Committee itself. Brutus had a keen sense that sports was an arena where anti-apartheid efforts might work where more philosophical strategies would not: "When our sportsmen are deprived of the drug of sports, then apartheid South Africa will go down the drain."

          In 1963 Brutus was shot in the back by South African police, and he nearly died because ambulances reserved for whites were the only ones immediately available.  In his eulogy Patrick Bond offers a significant historical note: "While recovering [from his wounds], he was held in the Johannesburg Fort Prison cell, which more than a half-century earlier housed Mahatma Gandhi."

          Brutus lived in exile during the 1970s and 1980s, primarily as a professor at three American universities.  He successfully fought attempts by the Reagan administration, which refused to join economic sanctions against South Africa, to deport him.  When he died, he was professor emeritus of African Studies at the University of Pittsburgh.

          Brutus was most famous as a poet, and after seeing the film Blood Diamond, he was inspired to write. Recalling that the first thing he saw after being shot in the back was the ad "For De Beers: A Diamond is Forever," he penned these lines on March 22, 2009: 

We do not talk, do we
of Blood Diamonds?
We do not talk do we
of displaced peoples?
of stolen land?
of sweated labour?
of bloodied labour?
bloodied diamonds?
for blood diamonds, too,
are forever

Brutus was the leading plaintiff in a suit filed against 34 American firms that sold arms and other equipment that apartheid oppression possible. Using the Alien Tort Act of 1796 the suit requests $400 billion in reparations for those South Africans and their families who were killed, tortured, wounded, or dispossessed by security forces. On October 12, 2007, the Second Circuit Court ruled against the companies and the case will now be decided in the Supreme Court.

Brutus has extended his political activism world-wide in a campaign against "economic apartheid." As he states: "In the new South Africa, we are all equal before the law. But in material terms, we are moving further apart. South Africa has overtaken Brazil to become the most unequal country in the world." Brutus actually was incorrect in claiming that South Africa now has the largest gap between the rich and the poor.  That distinction belongs to Namibia, where South Africa imposed its doctrine of racial separation from 1919 to 1989. On the Gini scale of 100, on which 0 indicates total economic equality, Namibia has a score of 70.7, while Sweden's number is 23. South Africa's score is 57.8 and the U.S. is at 45.

In 2007 Brutus declined to be inducted into the South African Sports Hall of Fame, because, as he stated: "It is incompatible to have those who championed racist sport alongside its genuine victims. It's time—indeed long past time—for sports truth, apologies and reconciliation." Brutus is alluding to the incredible healing achieved between apartheid's perpetrators and victims by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission chaired by Desmond Tutu.

While dying of prostate cancer Brutus still had the strength to speak out about the dangers of climate change and how it would affect poor countries much more than the rich.  In a December 10th letter to delegates at the Copenhagen conference, Brutus warned against "brokering a deal that allows the corporations and the oil giants to continue to abuse the earth."

As a final tribute to Dennis Brutus, Patrick Bond, author of Looting Africa: The Economics of Exploitation, has this to say: "The memory of Dennis Brutus will remain everywhere there is struggle against injustice. Uniquely courageous, consistent and principled, Brutus bridged the global and local, politics and culture, class and race, the old and the young, the red and green."

Nick Gier taught philosophy at the University of Idaho for 31 years.