A Giant Has Fallen: Dennis Brutus (1924-2009)

Football is Coming Home shares

TRIBUTES TO DENNIS BRUTUS, received 7-8 January

Memorial Tribute in CT – including sound clips of presenters, January 6

http://bushradio.wordpress.com/2010/01/07/dennis-brutus-a-hero-remembered/

Dennis Brutus: A hero remembered
By bushradio

by Khanyisa Tabata & Adrian Louw

Prof Dennis Brutus

Family and friends of South African poet, teacher, activist, and a
fighter against oppression Dennis Brutus gathered at the Iziko Museum in
Cape Town on Wednesday, 6 January 2010 to pay tribute to this remarkable
man.

Dennis Vincent Brutus was born on the 28 November 1924, Harare, Zimbabwe
(formerly Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia) to South African parents. His
parents moved back home to Port Elizabeth when he was 4 years old.

In 1959, Brutus helped form the South African Sports Association as
founding secretary. In 1962, he helped form a new group to challenge
South Africa?s official Olympic Committee. The organization, the South
African Non-Racial Olympic Committee, of which he was president,
persuaded Olympic committees from other countries to vote to suspend
South Africa from the 1964 and 1968 Olympics.

In 1970, the group gathered enough votes from national committees,
particularly those in Africa and Asia, to expel South Africa from the
Olympic movement.

He was also a member of the Anti-Coloured Affairs Department
organisation (Anti-CAD), a group that organised against the Coloured
Affairs Department through which the nationalist government attempted to
institutionalise divisions between blacks and coloureds.

He was arrested in 1960 for breaking the terms of his ?banning,? which
were he could not meet with more than two people outside his family, and
convicted to 18 months in jail. While trying to escape, he was shot in
the back at point-blank range. While recovering from the wound, Brutus
was sent Robben Island for 16 months.

Brutus was forbidden to teach, write and publish in South Africa.

His first collection of poetry, Sirens, Knuckles and Boots, was
published in Nigeria while he was in prison and received the Mbari
Poetry Prize, (an award to black poets). He declined the prize because
of the racial exclusivity of the prize.

After he was released, Brutus left South Africa and in 1983, he won the
right to stay in the United States as a refugee.

He continued to participate in protests against the apartheid government
while teaching in the United States.

He returned to South Africa after his ?unbanning? by the SA government
in 1990 and was based at the University of KwaZulu-Natal where he often
contributed to the annual Poetry Africa Festival hosted by the
University and supported activism against neo-liberal policies in
contemporary South Africa through working with NGOs.

At an induction ceremony in 2007 into the South African Sports Hall of
Fame, he publicly turned down his nomination, stating, ?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.?

In the memorial Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane described Brutus as
fearless, a hero who served people selflessly.

Ndungane added that Brutus will always be remembered.

Brutus died on 26 December 2009, at his home in Cape Town, South Africa.
He is survived by his wife, May; two sisters; eight children; nine
grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren.

A selection of audio clips from the memorial service:

Archbishop Ndungnane

Frank van der Horst (Sports Administration Community)

Professor Kader Asmal

James Matthews

Tony Brutus

Poems by grandchildren and closing

Greg Brutus

***

Durban Sings:

http://www.archive.org/details/DurbanSings_764

Learning by Re-membering, February 2009

Office of Dennis Brutus. Poet and activist. Dennis begins the
conversation by reading a poem he wrote the night before. It reflects
his thoughts about Gaza in the memory of other names and places of
horror. It?s a day after the demonstration to call for a boycott of
Israeli goods in the Port of Durban. Most of the conversation circles
around a poem by Dennis from 2004 called ‘Memory’ born from a march
through Alexandra township in Johannesburg. Now, it triggers more
thoughts about the dynamics of remembering and history in South Africa.
The poem had been an inspiration for and on the reading list of the
February DURBAN SINGS audio media and oral history workshop.

These clips are published to feed debate and listening exchange.
Comments and responses (written or audio) or links and reports of
related experiences are very welcome and can be posted to the contacts
below. For audio comments or re-mixes, please up-load your recordings on
archive.org (keyword: Durban Sings) and send us the links via the
comment boxes of the blog.

contacts:
http://www.ukzn.ac.za/ccs
http://www.durbansings.wordpress.com
http://www.radiocontinentaldrift.wordpress.com

***

Dennis in some of his last video interviews, in 2009 (9 minutes each):

* Dennis Brutus Part One
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Vh-DlCyhFM
* Dennis Brutus Part Two
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lyoGAlLabY

***

Mary Galvin: My young son Cameron wants to know why Dennis had to go.
He remembers Dennis spending time in a fort he built, sharing many
lunches and dinners, and coming to hold his new baby sister Kati. A few
months ago, Cameron came home with a school assignment that his greatest
wish was that Dennis would get better. Now he has a photo of Dennis
over his bed, a sort of a Father Christmas looking over him. Dennis
played an important role in many people’s lives, touching us all in
different and subtle ways. There is no question that we will continue
to be inspired by his life commitment to social justice, but then his
poetry forced us to see the personal and the political as one. And his
keen sense of boyish humour in planning and carrying out protest
actions, mimicking marriage and throwing shoes and pies. And his moral
outrage at the political shenangans that continue, which provided him
only a short space between Copenhagen and 2010 to leave peacefully with
his family around him. All of this was somehow accessible in the
friendly Dennis. Why did Dennis have to go? He has passed the baton to
us, let’s not let him down.

***

Lidy Nacpil: I have now just gone online after taking a break from the
internet for two weeks. And it is with great sadness that I learn of the
passing of Dennis Brutus. I met Dennis when he joined us as one of the
founding members of Jubilee South ten years ago – and by then he was
already a much beloved, renowned and deeply admired veteran of the
struggle for justice and liberation not only of South Africa and the
whole African continent but of the world. We are blessed to have met
him, worked with him, marched with him, heard his stories, partaken of
his wisdom, humor and wit, listened to his touching poetry, moved by his
passion. There are no words sufficient to truly celebrate and honor
Dennis and the life he lived. We can only work even harder to follow the
example he set.

***

Mzwanele Mayekiso: It is with great sadness to learn of comrade Dennis
Brutus?s passing! I consider myself one of the lucky comrades to have a
had an opportunity to chat and share thoughts with him on the phone when
you had visited him in Cape Town?I think it was mid to late November
just after the conference of the Commons! Dennis Brutus leaves a great
legacy for those of us who have followed his political work?who were
influenced by his work, etc, over the years! I had two moments that I
continue to cherish to this day, when we marched together in Chicago in
the early 1990?s against the apartheid state in Chicago; and in the late
1990?s when we again marched against the elitism and cronyism of the IMF
and the World Bank in Washington. Comrade Dennis Brutus was one of the
finest political sons of the South African revolutionary experience and
he will be remembered as such for generations to come. To his family and
comrades, we say: Thuthuzelekani, akuhlanga lungehlanga?inkungu ilala
kwintaba ngentaba! The spirit of this greatest son of Africa will always
be with us, to inspire us to continue the fight for equality and justice
for all in this beautiful planet of ours! Although the mighty SPEAR has
fallen, there are many others who will pick it up and follow on his
foot-steps! Lala Ngoxolo Qhawe lama Qhawe!

***

http://abdullahsaeedetal.blogspot.com/

Abdullah Saeed Foundation

DENNIS BRUTUS

Dennis Brutus was a human rights icon, a global champion of truth and
justice and an opponent of discrimination.

I was fortunate to travel with the late Yusuf Haffajee (Essop) and
another friend to the Time of the Writer festival, organised by the
Centre for Creative Arts University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban.

Dennis Brutus, easily recognisable with his long hair and full white
beard, was seated on the stage with John Pilger, an Australian
journalist and documentary maker, Ferial Haffajee who was then the
editor of Mail and Guardian and UKZN academic and writer Patrick Bond.

Dennis Brutus gave an inspiring short talk and many anecdotes as an
introduction to Pilger?s film The War on Democracy.

Mr Brutus?s life was marked by important milestones that will be
remembered and though a spark has been extinguished it will be rekindled
over and over again in the life, minds and hearts of conscience people
forever and I for one will hold Brutus dear.

***

Njeri Wangari

http://globalvoicesonline.org/2010/01/06/south-africa-a-glowing-tribute-to-dennis-brutus/

South Africa: A glowing tribute to Dennis Brutus
Wednesday, January 6th, 2010 @ 19:08 UTC

Their guilt
is not so very different from ours:
? who has not joyed in the arbitrary exercise of
power
or grasped for himself what might have been
another?s
and who has not used superior force in the
moment when he could,
(and who of us has not been tempted to these
things?) ?
so, in their guilt,
the bared ferocity of teeth,
chest-thumping challenge and defiance,
the deafening clamour of their prayers
to a deity made in the image of their prejudice
which drowns the voice of conscience,
is mirrored our predicament
but on a social, massive, organised scale
which magnifies enormously
as the private deshabille of love
becomes obscene in orgies.
*Dennis Brutus

‘Their Behavior’ is one of the many poems that Dennis Brutus wrote on
Blood River Day in 1965, in reference to the Blood River Massacre on the banks of Ncome River on 16 December 1838, in what is in present day, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.

Dennis Brutus: The News of the death of Dennis Brutus came as a rude shock to many, not just in South Africa but to the world at large who knew him for his poetry and activism against the Apartheid Government of South Africa in the 1960s and his fight for social justice throughout his life.

Brutus succumbed to prostate cancer at his home in Cape Town, South Africa on the 26th of December 2009. He died at the age of 85.

Born in Born in Harare, Zimbabwe (then Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia) to
South African parents in 1924, Brutus was of African, French and Italian
ancestry.

Brutus is reknown for having started the South African Sports
Association (SASA) as the founding secretary motivated by the unfairness
of selections for athletic teams. The Association began by lobbying
all-white sports organizations to change voluntarily, but made no progress.

In 1962, Brutus helped form a new group to challenge South Africa?s
official Olympic Committee. The organization, the South African
Non-Racial Olympic Committee, of which he was president, persuaded
Olympic committees from other countries to vote to suspend South Africa
from the 1964 and 1968 Olympics.
Brutus was in prison serving an 18 month sentence when news of the
country’s suspension from the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, for which he had
campaigned, broke. His Cell was next to Nelson Mandela?s at Robben Island.

It is while in prison that Brutus wrote his first collection of
political poems titled Sirens, Knuckles and Boots. This collection was
later awarded the Mbari Poetry Prize which is presented to an
exceptional black poet every year. Brutus turned the offer down because
of its racial exclusivity.

Until the time of his death, Brutus had published over 12 poetry books.

He returned to South Africa after having worked as a Professor Emeritus
at the University of Pittsburgh and was based at the University of
KwaZulu-Natal where he often contributed to the annual Poetry Festival
Poetry Africa hosted by the University.

He died supporting activism against neo-liberal policies in contemporary
South Africa including struggles against the management of that University.

News of his death and tributes have appeared on various mainstream news
websites as well as from bloggers throughout the African Continent.

The New York Times had the headline, Dennis Brutus, South African Poet,
Dies at 85 on 27th Dec, 09

Black Looks a Nigerian blogger gave a tribute by quoting Dennis Brutus’s call to action

We are in serious difficulty all over the planet. We are going to
say to the world: There’s too much of profit, too much of greed, too
much of suffering by the poor? The people of the planet must be in
action.’ Dennis Brutus

Annie commented on the news by saying

Hi Sokari, I haven?t been on BL in such a long time, I almost didn’t
recognize it. Congratulations on all your amazing work. I sent you a
message on facebook. Let?s email and reconnect.
RIP Dennis Brutus. An important generation is passing on and I am
not entirely sure who is stepping up and into their shoes.

KasieKulture, a South African Blogger wrote an Ode to a beloved, as his tribute in the poem,

the road to Havana
if only the travel agent told me
my heart will be tainted on the way to valhalla
my soul will be hijacked @ the gates of gehenna
that sinning will be standard as i make for pearly’s
i’ll feel nothing when i hurt people closest to me
innocent hearts lacerated for my failure to commit
i’m sorry sistas my one heart was torn into two
i had love for coitus but i fucked with banknotes
love letters that were written never mailed to me
still stacked in your bedroom with my physical address
i’m here baby still around my knuckles bruised in a bout
my spirit defiled my conscience shiver sending echoes of guilt
Read the rest of the poem here

oficinadesociologia, a blogger from Mozambique wrote this on their blog

Morreu Dennis Brutus

Sou um rebelde e a liberdade ? a minha causa – Dennis Brutus
(1924-2009), activista anti-apartheid, um dos maiores activistas e
poetas africanos, falecido de cancro na pr?stata na sua resid?ncia na
?frica do Sul. Foi uma vez detido em Mo?ambique na era colonial.
Obrigado ao Ricardo, meu correspondente em Paris, por me ter recordado o
desenlace. Paz ? sua alma.

The Cricket South Africa (CSA) sent their condolences to the family and colleagues of Dennis Brutus through the South African blog, Terrobyte.za

Other tributes and news of Brutus? death were featured on Po’frika in
Lesotho, Khanya and Empty Sky both in South Africa, Bagucci in Nigeria and Myself, Kenyan Poet in Kenya.

Rasta People 100 has put a photo slide tribute on Youtube, with Lucky
Dube’s song on Apartheid.

MediaGrr19, shares a video from a news clip that featured Brutus’ 2005 interview on Democracy Now

As Poets worldwide moan his death and wonder who will be fit to fill the shoes that Brutus has left, I leave you with a comment by Rethabile of Po’frika

I think, as Barack Obama said, ‘We are the ones we’ve been waiting
for.’ We need to step into such shoes today, or else?

Posted by Njeri Wangari

***

Socialist Worker
Erik Wallenberg:

We demand a people’s agenda
January 7, 2010

The world lost one of its greatest champions of justice with the passing
of Dennis Brutus on December 24.

In one man’s life, we can trace the history of the struggle for a better
world, from the fight to end apartheid in South Africa to racism in
America; from the struggle for global justice to the organizing to end
horrific wars; in the battle for civil rights for each individual to the
Herculean attempt to halt the impending climate disaster faced by all of
humanity.

I was fortunate enough to meet and talk with Dennis at an antiwar
conference in Burlington, Vt., a few years back. I then had the good
fortune to follow that up with a march alongside him in protest to the
U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I was struck by how engaged he was with the day-to-day struggles of ordinary activists to change the world.

He had a way of making you feel that you really mattered in the struggle for a better world. He was adamant that each individual has a role to play, and Dennis was never above spending his time talking with anyone and everyone who came up to him. I will always be grateful for those brief but rich encounters. He was kind and passionate at the same time. He will remain an inspiration to the countless individuals who struggle for a just world.

My first encounter with Dennis was on a crisp autumn day in Burlington, Vt., in October 2001, shortly after the September 11 attacks and, two weeks before that, the international conference on racism in Durban, South Africa.

The hysteria of war was in the air. Fortunately for me and more than
1,000 other people packed into the Ira Allen Chapel in Burlington, that
day in October was also filled with voices of sanity, voices of peace
and voices of justice. After historian Howard Zinn gave a rousing speech to the rapt crowd, Dennis took the stage to speak against war and connect the antiwar fight to the global justice struggle that preceded it.

***

http://kasiekulture.blogspot.com/2010/01/eulogy.html
1/7/10
EULOGY
A 21 Gun Salute to Dennis Brutus

I used to harbor serious political ambitions, until I saw what politics
did to Dennis Brutus. They first identify you as fresh, swallow you like
the shark did Biblical Jonah and look for the most fucked up spot on
earth to spit you out to. In the case of Brutus he was fresh because he
was an activist against apartheid, he looked juicy due to his piercing
probing poetry and the shark that swallowed him was named Robben Island.

However when it finally spitted him out he did not find himself in the
country of his destination but back at apartheid South Afrika with all
its warts. Brutus fought hard for sport isolation of the country and
succeeded. He was hurt two years ago when the Minister of Foreign
Affairs Dr Nkosazana Zuma said sports and politics don?t mix. Somewhere in his head he had a vision of the society he wanted South Afrika to become when the chickens finally come home to roost and the cattle come home from grazing the veld.

Then 1994 happened and the deal Nelson Mandela signed with the
Nationalist Party was the worst ever entered into between two consenting adults. It was the same sham deal similar to the one proposed by the Middle East Quartet for a Two-State solution in Palestine. At least the Palestinians have leaders with backbones.

It was similar to two unequal people fighting, the weak one being
assaulted so hard that s/he bleeds through the ears. Then at round 11
the weak takes to his feet and start administering serious punches on
the stronger opponent and it looks like s/he is going to knock the
opponent down. And then the referee stops the fight and declares a draw.
A fucking draw? not even a technical knock out!

A draw means that the title remains with the stronger ‘champion’ and the weaker challenger leaves with nothing but an illusion of a short-lived victory. These are what the sunset clauses proposed by Joe Slovo [RIP] and signed by Mandela at the negotiations achieved. Blacks wanted land,
the wealth of the country, economic participation and equality? the
wanted everything in the Freedom Charter. They fought for an egalitarian society where people wouldn’t be privileged by virtue of their skin colour.

What Brutus and millions of informed South Afrikans saw with the
Mandela-ANC was the perpetuation of the same status quo. The laager was
not going to be dismantled but will have new occupiers flying a black
green and gold flag. Fifteen years later the richest people are still
the same Oppenheimers, the land, which was stolen in 1913 and beyond is
still in the hands of the same thieves, the darkies participating in the
economy are mere tokens like Patrice Motsepe and others. And the
majority is piled up in the tender national, provincial and local
municipality system, battling for crumbs. Their biggest picture is not
Satrix 40 but Mercedes Benz ML 63.

That is the reason I had a problem with a newspaper that sad it was a
tragedy [or travesty] that Brutus refused to embrace the ‘new South
Afrika’. He was not alone; some of us have a problem embracing a sham when we know what the ideal looks like. I can’t embrace a whore when I married a virgin. The ideal that Mandela and his party swept aside to short-change so many darkies just for an opportunity to govern is not acceptable.

I met Brutus two times and everytime I spent time with him he had
something important and revolutionary to teach me. Not the fake
revolutionary rhetoric of the ANC-SACP-COSATU-MKMVA that only suffices
at SABC screened press conferences. The real revolution that stretches from Afrika to South Amerika, Middle East, Asia and the last despotic outpost ?Swaziland.

I enjoyed my times with Brutus and learnt the importance of sacrifice,
altruism and international activism beyond narrow battlefields like who
should be the CEO of the SABC, Transnet, Armscor or who should be in
cabinet. Something bigger than a tender. Brutus understood that South
Afrika will never be free until the last oppressed soul on earth has
been granted self-determination.

Brutus was a poet, a soldier and a father. He was a comrade’s comrade
and a realist ? something many so-called comrades today are not.
posted by KASIEKULTURE

***

From: Adrian Roscoe

Dear Tony and Jenny

Gert and I were very sorry to hear about Dennis’ death and send you and
all the family our condolences. The word “iconic” is overused these
days, but it perfectly captures Dennis’ position during the mad days of
apartheid, and I guess it will recur frequently in the obituaries that
will now be appearing around the world.

Condolence letters are famously hard to write, as you know, so I thought
I would dust off some lines I wrote back in 1976 at a time when I’d been
following Dennis’ career with avidity, much admiring his verse, but
never actually meeting him. Please forgive what follows. They are a few
comments I put together at that time:

“So much of the poetry of Dennnis Brutus, who does not appear in Cope
and Krige’s anthology [a contemporary snub, I suppose], is marked by
modesty and reason. It is remarkable that a man who has suffered the
worst inhumanities which white men have inflicted on Africa, including
forced labour and a bullet in the back, should prtest in so quiet a
voice, in such measured tones, in such unpretentious verse. Where
violence or screaming despair might be appropriate from an artist in
Brutus’ position, his charcteristic response blends dignity with
patience, and calmness with reason, determined always that emotionalism
must never triumph. Even when his oppressors are discomfited, we find
modest joy rather than thumping triumphalism, joy that is almost
embarrassed and self-conscious….His case, too urgent for hysteria,
must be stated plainly, that is on the whole literally, without undue
recourse to the figurative. Indeed, he often confines his word play to
closing lines as if rationaing for himself the poet’s joy of luxuriating
in the beauty of his own words; as if indeed the figurative represents
escapism. Emotion is rarely ovestrained and metaphor is subtly
unobtrusive. Perhaps, too, Brutus believes that a coolly argued low-key
approach is best suited to an oppressor who appears to scorn hysterics
and claims above all that he is reasonable. Thus, like Kenyatta in the
Thirties or Awolowo in the Forties, Brutus offers an extended exercise
in forensic persuasion, though he has stated his broad aims more in
terms of morbid pathology. He will:

…pin down the raw experience
tease the nerve of feeling and expose
it in the general tissue we dissect;
and then, below this, with attentive ear
to hear the faint heartthrob –
a flicker, pulse, mere vital hint
which speaks of the stubborn will
the grim assertion of some sense of worth
in the teeth of the wind
on a stony beach, or among rocks
where the brute hammers fall unceasingly
on the mind.

But why has such unassuming verse been received so warmly, with The Guardian saying ‘he has a grace and penetration unmatched even by Alexander Solzhenitsin’? The answer lies partly in a skill with poetic logistics which routinely underlies Brutus’ verse. If complex metaphor, recondite allusion, and sensual imagery are played down, the struggle to persuade must be waged with other devices. If the fiery protest of a
Diop and the pathos of a Vilakazi are rule out, what remains? Like the
Nigerian poet Okara, Brutus recognised how energy can be produced simply by pitting one force against another, as rubbed sticks create fire or two notes harmony. Also the exploitation of grammatical mood and syntax can achieve results as efficiently as devices of a more conventional variety. Hence the calmness of Brutus’ statements often jars with the violence of the cruelty he is describing. The cool logic of his verse is fruitfully at odds with the unreasoning nature of the system which oppresses him. His dogged clinging to the rock of humanity energises the verse by its contrast to the bestiality sweeping about him….Stated another way, the tensions of Brutus’ poetry arise from the finest
possible balance between the demands of reason and the claims of
emotion. As a result, it often recalls the best neo-classic work which
succeeded most when emotional fire was forced through the channels of
reason. The comparison can be pushed further, for like the best
neo-classicists, like Pope especially, Brutus’ style and structures are
at one with his morality: the order and balance of his poetic art
reflect witheringly on the disorder he sees around him. And like the
Pope of the Dunciad, he is writing ever purer verse as the darkness
closes around him….Yet moral and physical survival are possible,
despite the horrors of a police state:

Somehow we survive
and tenderness, frustrated, does not wither
…………………………
boots club the peeling door.
But somehow we survive
severence, deprivatiuon, loss.
Patrols uncoil along the asphalt dark
hissing their menace to our lives;
most cruel, all our land is scarred with terror,
rendered unlovely and unlovable;
sundered are we and all our passionate surrender
but somehow tenderness survives.

…And behind all lies Brutus’ faith, his belief that tomorrow will be
better, that change is possible and probable, that ‘peace will come’ and
‘men will go home’. Faith and patience are strong in him and the voice
that cries ‘Destroy, Destroy’ or ‘Let them die in their thousands!’ is
condemned as the voice of unwisdom. He is thankful he has been spared
exposure to rhetoric…for rhetoric would have ‘falsified/ a simple
experience;/ living grimly,/ grimly enduring.’ It is true that Brutus
does allow himself an occasonal flush of mischievous delight at having
pained a society that makes a God of sport, and it is true that he whips
this society for its ‘bared ferocity of teeth’, its ‘chest thumping
challenge and defiance’, and its prayers to a ‘deity made in the image
of their prejudice; but even here he can assert that all this evil
merely reflects the predicament of his own people, who, though today’s
victims, are as open to the temptations of power and inhumanity as those
currently oppressing them.”

All this and more – and I recall writing it with the feeling that I’d
lit on the work of a very fine and special kind of poet, who could make
art even out of playing off the indicative and subjunctive gramatical
moods against each other.

Forgive my bringing this before you, but it speaks my mind better,
perhaps, than the cliches I would have been drawn into in a conventional
letter of condolence. May Dennis rest in peace and may future
generations look back on his remarkable life, his powerful literary
achievement and his fine family. And may Jerome and Matthew follow in
their grandfather’s literary footsteps

***

South African IOC Leader on Brutus Passing

South African IOC member Sam Ramsamy tells Around the Rings he is
saddened by the passing of Dennis Brutus. While praising the work of
Brutus, which led to the expulsion and ultimate return of South Africa
to the Olympic Movement, Ramsamy notes that Brutus ?did not fully
comprehend the realities of reconciliation.?

?Sadly, he divorced himself from post-apartheid reconstruction of South
African sport,? Ramsamy said.

?I believe that was because he did not fully comprehend the realities of
reconciliation and the difficult process of uniting all sectors of South
African society.

“He was an activist on many fronts for countless causes; but not always
in tune with majority opinion. However, his contribution Brutus died of
prostate cancer on Dec. 26. He was 85.?

***

POEMS FOR DENNIS BRUTUS

Tess Arenas:

The Poets Poet

Trumpets boasting through the cosmos
As he reads his latest Haiku
Politico and activista for the ages
Encouraging prodding calling us to action.

He is more than a weathered warrior
More than Speaker of the House
He is the righteous soul of South Africa
and the conscious of the world.

Dennis mighty Dennis!

***

Vonani Bila:

dennis on the march

goatee-bearded pilgrim
in thick rimmed glasses
unbent driftwoodleaf bard
you say with impassioned breath
work while the light lasts
the sun is shining
the moon so sprightly bright
in neat jacket
t-shirt & suitcase
you soar
from cities of gems
to villages of cow-dung
unscathed by genocides
& tornados
warrior spirit
you traverse
across burning mountains
& the tumultuous atlantic
braving typhoons & tsunamis
wordsmith with a simple lust
for freedom
you fly far & wide
braving earthquakes
& volcanoes
ready to twirl & turn
in storms of tyranny
here you come
old young man
with fire
to blow
the cowed contractors
of global greed
here you come
old young man
with such undimmed light
& untamed fervor
let grabbers of wealth
open their ears
& hear the truth
let them learn
to listen sufficiently
to people
in tin shacks

maker of revolution
with a stubborn hope
for a better tomorrow
fire glows in your eyes
in the streets of joburg
in broad daylight
the green flies
stuck a bullet in your back
they wanted you dead
yet you carried the bullet
& galloped into exile
even today
at the age of eighty
you still march
in the streets of joburg
feet firm on the ground
though in the smothering sun
of squeezed dreams
you march
with the hungry patriots
whose harvest of freedom
is but dust
red flags fly
up high in the sky
not against the draconian pass laws
or botha’s total strategy
but you drum stern words
into your former comrades? blacked ears
those comrades you broke quarry with
in robben island
those gucci socialists
with treacherous sickness
those who now disown their people
ravaged by throbbing pain
those potbellied men & women
abandoned by people’s vision
to chart the path of the freedom charter
you march
with the angry masses
calling on people of the world
to smash the world bank of beasts
you march
in streets & squares
raising a clenched fist
demanding the paris club
& london club
to cancel the debt

unbent revolutionary
you know the underclass
in factories
can’t eat gear promises.
the underclass
in gutted townships
won’t breathe nepad hollow air
radical with a young heart
you march
between murky alex shacks
hand over people’s cries
to sandton of villains, pirates & suckers
blended voices
of the working class
sing in unison
radical with a young heart
though mandela is free
rivers of typhoid
& cholera flow freely
& consume the poors of the world
blade-sharp revolutionary
you march
alongside the landless peasants
the evicted & the unemployed
you march
alongside the students
& the hiv-positive
you march
alongside the harangued retrenched workers
& climb over hills of working class tribulations
ask why in the periphery of cities
of the new south africa
filthy shack tin-roofed camps grow
along modern throughways
& drifting highways

teacher of the people
brewer of raw music
fire glows in your eyes
in leuwkop dungeon
apartheiders kept you behind bars
interrogating & torturing you
in the small hours of the clock
they wanted you numb & still
& they failed
you survived steel hands & fists
march on
without tremor comrade brutus
in durban
porto alegre
seatle
in genoa
prague
quebec
in cochabamba
bamako
nairobi
far & wide
in distant skies
dutifully handing out
press cuttings & leaflets
for not even the police armed with dogs
can stop you
from addressing the media

comrade dennis
forever in the battlefield
against the obscenities
of bush & blair
dennis on the march
shouting
free mumia abu jamal
who waits without tremor
nor fear on death row
dennis on the march
shouting viva hector peterson
commemorating the fighting spirit
of june 1976 children
spirited young lions
who fought
the enemy
with fire, stones, dance & poetry
causing all shriek
in apartheid junta’s spine
dennis on the march
reminding us that without robust debate
democracy belongs to the dogs
even mandela the freedom fighter
must be questioned
dennis on the march
digesting spender, donne
langston, pound
in pleasure
dennis on the march
languid leaves fall
the wind howls
the sun & light
brush your face swiftly
dennis on the march
forever reminding aspirant poets
how to write poems with brevity
how to jam & not just slam
knowing to be human is to be creative
& to be creative is to be human
dennis on the march
telling us the world is filled
with soundless weeping
man with stubborn hope
at eighty
courageous & strong
i salute you
the struggle against tyranny
is worth living for
your unequivocal love for life
is deep beneath your skin
& every molecule
of your body

***

Mart?n Espada:

Stone Hammered to Gravel

The office workers did not know, plodding through 1963
and Marshall Square station in Johannesburg,
that you would dart down the street between them,
thinking the police would never fire into the crowd.
Sargeant Kleingeld did not know, as you escaped
his fumbling hands and the pistol on his hip,
that he would one day be a footnote in the book of your life.

The secret policeman on the corner did not know,
drilling a bullet in your back, that today the slug
would belong in a glass case at the museum of apartheid.
The bystanders did not know, as they watched
the coloured man writhing red on the ground,
that their shoes would skid in blood for years.

The ambulance men did not know,
when they folded the stretcher and refused you a ride
to the white hospital, that they would sit eternally
in Hell?s emergency room, boiling with a disease
that darkens their skin and leaves them screaming for soap.
The guards at Robben Island did not know,
when you hammered stone to gravel with Mandela,
that the South Africa of their fathers
would be stone hammered to gravel by the inmates,
who daydreamed a republic of the ballot
but could not urinate without a guard’s permission.

Did you know?
When the bullet exploded the stars
in the cosmos of your body, did you know
that others would read manifestos by your light?
Did you know, after the white ambulance left,
before the coloured ambulance arrived, if you would live at all,
that you would banish the apartheid of the ambulance
with Mandela and a million demonstrators dancing at every funeral?
Did you know, slamming the hammer into the rock’s stoic face,
that a police state is nothing but a boulder
waiting for the alchemy of dust?
Did you know that, forty years later,
college presidents and professors of English
would raise their wine to your name
and wonder what poetry they could write
with a bullet in the back?

What do the people we call prophets know?
Can they conjure the world forty years from now?
Can the poets part the clouds for a vision in the sky
easily as sweeping curtains across the stage?

A beard is not the mark of prophecy
but the history of a man’s face.
No angel shoved you into the crowd;
you ran because the blood racing to your heart
warned a prison grave would swallow you.
No oracle spread a banquet of vindication before you
in visions; you mailed your banned poems
cloaked as letters to your sister-in-law
because the silence of the world
was a storm roaring in your ears.

South Africa knows. Never tell a poet: Don?t say that.
Even as the guards watched you nodding in your cell,
even as you fingered the stitches fresh from the bullet,
the words throbbed inside your skull:
Sirens knuckles boots. Sirens knuckles boots.
Sirens knuckles boots.

***

Philo Ikonya:

Dennis Brutus,

I salute you master of the word,
Where have you gone?
Who opened the door?
Can the wind shut it?
But you have seen that path.
I must accept this.

Go well and yet do not go,
Poets never go to a silent night.
their words lighting lit and unlit candles
staying on pen tips and lips.
Yours grip stonger than
a good handshake,
hold onto us,
on us and Africa
whose dawn,
rises in your eyes,
do not shut them
when they do.
See beyond lids
and stay alight.
On this tiny wicker
that snows dampen,
and which again and again,
Is lit in you.
may your spirit glow.

***

Deela Khan:

Passing of a Great Heart

We?ve come through a year, a year
Unimaginable, hanging heavy like
Summer grapes on the gut
Witnesses to a mass exodus of Great Hearts:
Leaders, movers, rockers, shapers of our Age
We re-enter our time

In the green family garden with dogs and children,
Indigenous floras burgeoning into a vegetal tapestry,
Giant strelitzias, birds-of-paradise
Soaring skyward like arrows
We toasted your four score and fifth year

With the summer breeze spiced lemony geranium,
Perched on your mobile throne
Poet? warrior? king
Cradled against the softness of skins
Body failing, voice faltering
A spirit alight with undying fight
We wished you?

‘You’re here’, you said
Eyes fiery yet faraway
I gently took your hand
Your pain pulsing in the palm of my hand

At high school in the post- Sharpeville ’70s
Nortje’s world and ‘Dead Roots’ made me
Discover you and Langston Hughes
‘Letters to Martha’ and ‘A Simple Lust’ ripped off
The cataracts veiling my vision’
Iconoclast, exiled mentor, you
Blasted a whole generation of youth
Out of slumber into action
Our poems, the fire and ice of your influence
Tireless troubadour of truth, hope and justice
Our skies, air, atmosphere, our strip-mined
Wildnerness, Eagles, rivers, seas, estuaries, fish
Whales, bears, honey bees and the burnt
Little ones languishing in sweatshops and wars, the
Leached labourers of the world, refugees,
Prisoners and torn souls ensnared in
Concentration camps still dotting our planet
Call out your name; drum your praises into the wind

Dennis, amidst banners and loudhailers,
Vitriolic poet-campaigner, fearless eco-warrior,
You strode the struggle-rent perimeters of the globe
From Josie to Mozambique, Robben Island to London,
Sweden to Dakar, Caracas to Cuba, Cairo to Iraq,
Seattle to Switzerland, Mexico to Maddrid,
Rotterdam to Nigeria, Algeria to Afghanistan
And across your wintering hours
Your spirit ached to soar to Copenhagen;
To Seattle Copenhagen, menace to the oil Moghals,
Demand the survival of our people, forests,
Mountains, waterways, dwindling birds and animals,
Demand the survival of our planet as we know it.

***

Fatima Meer:

A Tribute to my Friend and Comrade

Halala Dennis Brutus! Halala

Indomitable spirit!
Immortal now!
Ever leading us!
Ever inspiring us!
Ever with the poor and the powerless!
Ever empowering them to be free.

Intolerant of oppression and corruption
Fighting it fearlessly at every step of your stride
Your voice rang out to the people to be free in themselves
To be like you, fearless against the oppressor, crushing corruption
You battled on relentlessly, invincibly against the corrupt usurpers of
the people?s power and the people?s rights

Comrade, friend, you will remain forever with us.
A moral standard to follow, a moral standard to uphold
Like you, we will remain forever free
Crushing the demon exploiters but never being crushed by them
We will follow every step of your powerful long strides and conquer the
unconquerable

This is not a time to feel low and hopeless because we have lost one of
the greatest leaders we had known
It is time to know this leader
To recall him, recall his might and power
It is a time to recall Dennis.
A time to gather the moments he lived amongst us and understand its meaning.
For those moments are his legacy to us, we have to pledge that we will
never abandon that legacy
That we will forever remain true to it and realise it in ourselves, in
our time.

What is that legacy?

Dennis Brutus was a fearless fighter against oppression, against tyrants
who sought to exploit and destroy the poor and the powerless, and those
who sought to profit from the labour of the people.

Dennis Brutus was freedom itself. At every step of his long stride, he
sought freedom, never for himself, but for those around him, who lived
in shacks, under leaking roofs, prey to hunger and cold.

He forever impressed on us that those in power, regardless of their
race, would not serve our freedom, they would serve their own self
interest; that only we could gain our freedom through our tireless efforts.

Hamba Khale Comrade secure in the belief that we go with you and will
forever aspire to be like you.

***

Henning Melber:

In Honour of a Giant

The rock that does not crack,
the river that does not get dry,
the grass that remains green,
the snow that never smelts,
the ice that does not splitter,
the sun that always shines,
the air that others breathe,
the inspiration that never fades,
the perseverance that never ends,
the courage that never bows,
the upright walk against all odds,
has passed the gate into eternity.
Dennis Brutus,
intellectual giant, political and cultural icon,
salute to you, who departed,
with respect and in humbleness.
You live on in our actions and thoughts.

***

Deena Padayachee:

The Mahatma of Poetry

Under the skin

When we were helpless and abused,
When your very name was illegal,
When your thoughts were unutterable,
When your writing was banned,
When you were shot by the South African secret police,
When you were incarcerated on Robben Island with Mandela,
When your bullet wound was kicked by the savage warder on Robben Island,
Your very survival still gave us hope,

dear Dennis.

Your wife, your children, your career, your life,
all in the clutches of a merciless, vile regime,
Still, you did not falter.

How could a sentient soul,
like you even exist,
We asked,
if there was no God,
if we are not also God’s creations?

Blessed with a great intelligence,
incisive perception,
incredible vision,

Goaded by the overwhelming injustice in your native land,
You forsook yourself,
Your family,
Your life.
You volunteered everything that you are
for South Africa,
for the service of humanity,
for the world.

Imperfect as we are, human as we are,
Unethical as we can be, false as we can be,
Dishonourable as we can be,
You still believed in us,
You risked your skin for us,
You made yourself into a target for us.

You loved us
When the powerful and the influential
Asserted
That we are not worth loving.

You believed in us, Dennis,
When we were rejected everywhere,
When we did not believe in ourselves,
When everywhere in our native land,
We were treated like vermin by the oppressor and the oppressed.

You helped us believe in South Africa,
in South Africans,
when all over our native land
we were confronted
by devilish vileness,
unethical ‘laws’,
sophistry,
and unbelievable bad manners.

At the zenith of the barbarism,
Fearlessly,
You held South Africa’s head up high.
The light of freedom grew,
Illuminating our claustrophobic, circumscribed existence.
Your life, your skin, your courage, your example,
Helped nurture the light
When so many of us were too scared to even think.

You gave us hope when
despair asphyxiated us like a shroud
taking the very air from our lungs
the very blood from our hearts.

Like a being sent by the All Mighty,
You helped us believe
That somewhere in the distant future
there might begin a glimmer of civilisation,
there might even be liberation.
That my aged mother might one day
also be allowed to walk freely anywhere in her native country.
That we too, might one day become an integral part of the human race,
that we too, might one day be invited to represent our native land,
That we too, might one day savour the Indian ocean
off the beaches of paradise.

Like a mythical being,
Brutus fought on the side of the truth,
on the side of the helpless,
the legally handicapped, the poor,
those who could give him no advantage,
a heroic stance that would earn him no peace,
only the brutality of the immoral, the whores, the omnipotent.

Like an indestructible truth shimmering through the shroud of lies and
propaganda,
Dennis Brutus shone through the darkness.
We realised that
that not all beings blessed with intelligence,
knowledge and power are abusive.

Like an Avatar of old,
Like a Miguel Cervantes,
He fought the awful terror,
his only armour,
his belief system, his value system,
his sense of what is right and what is wrong.

And yes, despite the most horrendous, all powerful enemy,
Despite the back-stabbers, the betrayers,
the sell-outs, the ipimpi, the prostitutes,
He triumphed,
He survived.

The Mahatma fights on,
Peacefully,
His only weapons, his divine mind,
His immortal writing.

Assailed from every quarter,
His integrity could not be undermined.
Monitored ceaselessly,
He still manages to maintain a civilised equanimity.
He believes in the most intellectually disadvantaged,
the most unlettered, the most destitute among us.
He believes in us, the All Mighty’s creations.

Undeterred, he risks everything that he is.
Unafraid, he voices his opinions
Even when he offends the mighty and the influential,
He speaks for all of us,
The intimidated, the weak, the terrified, the powerless.

His entire life is devoted to lessening our pain,
our suffering,
He soldiers on in the service of our noble cause,
Asking for nothing, taking nothing.
Honoured all over our battered world,
And even in South Africa,
Sadly, he is sometimes still snubbed in his native land.

Even now,
with racism, savagery,
and an absence of conscience dehumanising our country,
Steadfast and resilient,
He does not veer from the path of civilisation.

For Dennis Brutus there is no quiet retirement,
no happy solace among his great grandchildren.
While you can breathe, Dennis,
You still feel, you still speak out,
You still write,
You still care for those
who do not even know
that you are blessing them with your ardour.

Unbelieveably humble,
You demand nothing from us.
You do not show regret or even anger at our ignorance,
our inhumanity,
our pathetic lack of morality and integrity.
You keep to the path of honour no matter what.

Your life is dedicated to us,
Your enemies are numberless,
Every greedy tyrant, every autocratic dictator,
every cruel savage who fears the truth,
who wallows in greed, inhumanity, propaganda and censorship
hates you,
But still, somehow,
You survive among us,
blessed helots,
Almost anonymously.

Despite everything,
You still believe in us,
You still believe in yourself,
You still believe in our ravaged, yet blessed land,
South Africa.

***

Peter Rorvik:

Lionheart Dennis

Gentleman Dennis, gentle soul,
silverbeard, quicksilvermind,
there are many ways and means, good general,
to keep your foot upon the frontline.

Swopping chariot for an armchair, your sword for a pen
may the muse accompany and inspire you
on new adventures, happy trails and bends.

Stoic stalwart, steadfast lionheart,
your steel-eyed principles radiate both heat and light
no matter where, why, how, who for
you remain champion of the cause.

***

Prince Shapiro:

Epistle for Dennis Brutus

March on soldier
progression can not be kaput
forever and a day
your never-aged spirit shall be extolled

if parting ways means ascension
go on
perhaps bigotry tumbles down from the blue above
go on
glow like all conscientious stars up in the firmament

if exodus orders descending graveward
chauvinism in the deep below
evil roots of capitalist bushes it fertilizes
go on
plunge cavernously and squeeze this insularity out
out like a hot magma tourist attraction eruption
to free the poor from capiterrorism horrors

if resettlement constitutes lingering at legroom confinement
in the grubby air that asphyxiates us to paucity
go on
be an incensation of full consciousness
it’s a mandate comrade – – – obey it
long drawn up has been the memorandum
go on
from your dust mound
liberators shall emerge
from your ashes
echoes of more fire
shall be heard
more fire
until capitalism dies
more fire
until turncoats repent
more fire
until ubuntu take-a-stand
more fire
until??until??
the end

***

Michael Weeder:

Brutus, siempre

Between Christmas and Epiphany
a great tree fell, unheard,
?neath the silent, African night,
his fleeting spirit within sighting sigh
of cloud-shrouded Table Mountain.

Between the island of Makana *
and the receding shore-line of freedom
he referenced for us, this bearded colossus from ebhayi, **
from the archives of injustice
the simple truths, the magificat of freedom
now footnoted into the his-stories of board-rooms and the like
from whence capitalisms newly-ordained,
baptised him ultra-left.

Between this now and a past of commemoration services,
– the Caspirs idling promise of the violence to come –
in a church hall in Mitchell’s Plain
a chorus of young voices, ‘Today in prison, they will sing just one song’
sourcing an elusive courage, ‘… strong and steady…’
numbering themselves amongst ‘ … those who will do the much that needs
be done …’
Brutus is, as he was then, a muse of freedom.

Between Christmas and Epiphany
this magi of the poors,
paused … his ears alert to children’s voices on old Hanover Street,
detailed between the banjo chord and Boeta Achmat’s steady, alto tenor
‘… da korrie Alabama …’ and then a slow, resolute turning
towards the orange-hued sun spilling over the Hottentots Holland
his African/Latino/Palestinian soul blazing a path
on his march onto other geographies of freedom.

*Makana was a 19th century Xhosa Chief who resisted the British and is
numbered amongst the first political prisoners incarcerated on Robben
Island, also known as Makana’s island.
** Zimbabwean born Dennis Brutus lived and taught in Port Elizabeth for
a while.