In memory of the late Dennis Brutus.
28 November 1924 - 26 December 2009
Created by RastaPeople.info
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Some information from Wikipedia:
"Brutus was an activist against the apartheid government of South Africa in the 1960s. He campaigned to get South Africa suspended from the Olympic Games; this eventually led to the country's expulsion from the games in 1970. He joined the Anti-Coloured Affairs Department organisation (Anti-CAD), a group that organised against the Coloured Affairs Department which was an attempt by the government to institutionalise divisions between blacks and coloureds. He was arrested in 1963 and jailed for 18 months on Robben Island.
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. The book received the Mbari Poetry Prize, awarded to a black poet of distinction, but Brutus turned it down on the grounds of its racial exclusivity.
In December 2007, Brutus was to be inducted into the South African Sports Hall of Fame. At the induction ceremony, Brutus publicly turned down his nomination, stating, "It is incompatible to have those who championed racist sport alongside its genuine victims. Its time—indeed long past time—for sports truth, apologies and reconciliation."
According to fellow writer Olu Oguibe, interim Director of the Institute for African American Studies at the University of Connecticut, "Brutus was arguably Africa's greatest and most influential modern poet after Leopold Sedar Senghor and Christopher Okigbo, certainly the most widely-read, and no doubt among the world's finest poets of all time. More than that, he was a fearless campaigner for justice, a relentless organizer, an incorrigible romantic, and a great humanist and teacher." "
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