Life force of 'wonderful writer' Dennis Brutus will live on in his poetry
By Maureen IsaacsonAmong the tributes paid to Dennis Brutus at a spirited memorial service last Saturday at Johannesburg's Bassline, Nadine Gordimer reminded the packed auditorium of the relevance of the words of Albert Camus, who said: "The moment I am no more than a writer, I shall cease to write".
"Dennis was a wonderful writer," said Gordimer, "there is no contradiction there."
She said he was a writer who could make sense out of his human life and his time in exile, in prison, and his actions and he used all of this in his work. "If you wish to honour Dennis, please read his poetry, go to the libraries and to the bookshops, and read it."
Oswald Mtshali, the author of the classic poetry anthology, Sounds of a Cowhide Drum, said that Brutus struck him as an absolutely honest man, a man of integrity, an optimist who never lost hope.
"Dennis said if you lost hope, everything was lost," said Mtshali.
He recalled that Brutus was detained and tortured in Marshall Square, where he was kept in the dungeons and in the early morning of the first day of detention he was taken to Kruis Street. Brutus was shot twice in the back when he attempted to escape. Three weeks prior to this, Looksmart Ngundle, an Umkonto we Sizwe commander, "was taken into torture chambers and came out in a body bag".
Brutus wrote a poem about Looksmart's death, said Mtshali. "Brutus was prepared to fight for justice for all of us," he said.
Among the others who remembered Brutus were the Alan Kolski-Horwitz and the Botsotso Jesters, Morakabe Seakhoa of the Write Associates, a variety of poets, and Patrick Bond, who heads the Centre for Civil Society at University of KwaZulu-Natal.
Bond, who wrote an obituary in The Sunday Independent when Brutus died in his sleep, at 85, on December 26, recalled that following being shot in the back, Brutus almost died in front of the Anglo American Corporation headquarters while awaiting an ambulance reserved for blacks.
Brutus, who was born in Salisbury, Rhodesia, in 1924, and moved with his parents to Port Elizabeth, graduated from Fort Hare university with a BA in English, was held in the Johannesburg Fort and later transferred to Robben Island, where he was held in the cell neighbouring Nelson Mandela's.
In 1964-65, Brutus wrote the collections Sirens Knuckles Boots and Letters to Martha and Other Poems from a South African Prison (1968). Thoughts Abroad (1970), published under the pseudonym John Bruin, was taught in South Africa until it was discovered that Bruin was in fact Brutus.
He moved to the US in 1971, where he served as a professor of literature and African studies at Northwestern (in Chicago) and Pittsburgh universities. Brutus fought for reparations to black South Africans from corporations that benefited from apartheid; an activist until his death.
The experiences of prison, exile, the brutality of apartheid; these were his themes. They are apparent in A Simple Lust (1973) and Stubborn Hope: New Poems and Selections from 'China Poems' and 'Strains' (1978). Salutes and Censures (1984) and Airs and Tributes (1989) dealt again with issues of apartheid and the hell it incurred on black South Africans.
Jethro Ibikunle, writing in Next, the Nigerian journal, describes an event in Benin City, Nigeria, earlier last month organised by Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria in honour of Brutus.
He described Brutus's frantic attempts to escape deportation from the US under the Ronald Reagan administration.
"Had Dennis Brutus lost the right to asylum, his life would have been in serious jeopardy. At one point, his home country's government rated him as one of the 20 most dangerous South African political figures overseas."
For devotees of justice, Brutus has set the bar impossibly high. Ninety unseen poems will be published posthumously by Worcester State University in the US.
Published on the web by Sunday Independent on February 6, 2010.
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