Dennis Brutus, who was jailed in the 1960s with Nelson Mandela, instrumental in South Africa’s suspension from the Olympics, and called Africa’s most important poet, died yesterday at the age of 85.  He was a Professor of Poetry and Black Studies at Pitt and Northwestern for some years, before returning to South Africa after Apartheid ended.  From the AP:

Born in 1924 in what was then Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, Brutus was the son of South African teachers who moved back to their native country when he was still a boy. He majored in English at Fort Hare University, which he attended on full scholarship, and taught at several South African high schools.

By his early 20s, he was politically involved and helped create the South African Sports Association, formed in protest against the official white sports association. Arrested in 1963, Brutus fled the country when released on bail, but was captured and nearly killed when shot as he attempted to escape police custody inJohannesburg and forced to wait for an ambulance that would accept blacks. Brutus was sentenced to 18 months at Robben Island.

His books “Sirens, Knuckles, Boots” and “Letters to Martha and Other Poems from a South African Prison” were published while he was in jail. He was confined, but unbeaten, writing in the poem “Somehow We Survive” that “All our land is scarred with terror/rendered unlovely and unlovable/sundered are we and all our passionate surrender/but somehow tenderness survives.” In “Prayer,” written after he left prison, he proclaims, “Uphold — frustrate me if need be/so that I mould my energy/for that one swift inerrable soar.”

Brutus was a rare man and aritst, engaging the world in issues of political justice with relentless energy, while filling it with the beauty of his poetry (here’s a list of his works available on Amazon).  In his later years, he championed climate change issues, and as the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports, even wrote newspaper editorials about the recent Copenhagen international environmental conference, which he had hoped to attend, but could not due to his failing health.

Here is Brutus reciting his poem Gull:

With the passing of Brutus, the world has lost a powerful force for political and environmental peace.  Before the global warming crisis became a pressing international concern, he had united the ideas of preserving nature’s balance and establishing political justice. In one of his last poems, delivered at an environmental conference in Venezuela just a few months ago, he described a future where a celestial symbol of hope unites the earth in peace and freedom.  When that star finally arrives, I can’t help think that Brutus will be a big reason it shines.

There will come a time we believe
When the shape of the planet
and the divisions of the land
Will be less important;
We will be caught in a glow of friendship
a red star of hope
will illuminate our lives
A star of hope
A star of joy
A star of freedom

- Dennis Brutus October 18, 2008, Caracas, Venezuela.

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