Poetry and Protest: A Dennis Brutus Reader
edited by Lee Sustar and Aisha Karim
Chicago: Haymarket Books 2006, 414 pages, including index, $16 paper
Leafdrift
Dennis Brutus
edited by Lamont B. Steptoe
Camden, NJ: Whirlwind Press, 2005, 216 pages, $21.95 paper
WE HAVE BEEN given a gift of two wonderful books of writings by Dennis Brutus. One is a very beautiful collection of poetry, plus photographs and an interview, edited by Lamont B. Steptoe. The second, a more ambitious compilation nicely edited by Lee Sustar and Aisha Karim, will be an invaluable resource not only for all those wanting information about earlier anti-racist and global justice struggles and the South African freedom movement in particular, but also for all those who will draw inspiration from Dennis Brutus’s efforts in order to participate effectively in future struggles.
Poetry and Protest contains a more modest sampling of poems, but also a series of richly autobiographical and political interviews, plus ample selections of documents related to the struggles against the super-racist system of South African apartheid and, later, the evils of “globalization.” Both books should be in the libraries of all who love poetry and social justice.
Dennis Brutus has for some years been an internationally famous poet and activist. In Protest and Poetry: A Dennis Brutus Reader we learn that he became politically active in South Africa in part through a cluster of revolutionary socialists influenced by the ideas of Leon Trotsky, but later moved — in part through its development and promotion of the historic Freedom Charter — into the orbit of the more sizeable African National Congress (ANC), associating with the militants of the South African Communist Party (SACP) who were so influential in its ranks.
Arrested in 1963, then shot while attempting to escape, he survived to break rocks with Nelson Mandela and other imprisoned revolutionaries on the notorious Robben Island. Released in 1965, he was able to leave South Africa a year later — becoming prominent first in Britain and then in the United States in international anti-apartheid efforts.
Many of us in the United States first became aware of Dennis Brutus in the 1970s, as an eloquent spokesman in exile against the system of racial separation and white domination afflicting his homeland. Not only a fine poet, he was also a sophisticated organizer — helping to put together and lead a powerful movement (SANROC — South African Non-Racial Olympic Committee) to have the all-white teams of the apartheid regime excluded from the Olympic Games.
He explained in verse and prose the necessity of opposing the regime and the system that had — for example — gunned down peacefully protesting men, women and children in Sharpeville in 1960 —
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What is important and certainly not Remember Sharpeville Nowhere is racial dominance what the world whispers Remember Sharpeville And remember the unquenchable will for freedom |
He told us about the meaning of the Soweto student uprising of 1976 —
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Understandably |
He told us about the vision of a new South Africa —
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This is a land |
When conservatism’s shining “champion of freedom” and “great communicator” Ronald Reagan became president of the United States, Dennis Brutus became a cause célèbre as the U.S. government — in deference to its white-racist and staunchly anti-Communist ally on the African continent — sought to deport the activist back to a South African prison.
More than once, with many others, I had the opportunity to hear him explain his case, focusing on the realities of the brutal apartheid system. And many of us sometimes had an opportunity to linger over the poignancy of his poetic works. I loved listening to him, always, whether he was reading poems or giving talks. And he was obviously a revolutionary militant, as he explained in 1975 —
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I am a rebel and freedom is my cause: |
He won his battle against the Reagan administration, and in the wake of that victory he accepted an offer to be the Chair of the Department of Africana Studies at the University of Pittsburgh in 1985. It was astonishing to me that this great spokesman for freedom was coming to live in my hometown.
Some of us who were “normal” day-to-day activists initially felt some reticence about approaching such an imposing presence — but Dennis, a seasoned activist himself, had no taste for holding aloof from the likes of us, rubbing elbows with increasing numbers of us at meetings, picket lines, rallies, and more.
He did not hide his misgivings over compromises with system of the global capital that so many of his ANC comrades, once partisans of socialism, were now making as the apartheid regime was collapsing and they themselves were assuming the reins of power. As he put it in an angry poem written at 3:05 a.m. in 2000
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Forgive me, comrades |
Dennis’s many years on the Left helped him to place into perspective the disappointments associated with the conservative shift in ANC policy — which constituted a post-Cold War capitulation to the pressures from the multi-national corporations and governmental superpowers dominating the global capitalist economy. It was the new variant of what such Marxists of the past as Lenin and Luxemburg had analyzed as imperialism, and which in its new form has been hailed as “globalization.”
He turned his energies to build “a globalization from below” against exploitation and oppression, becoming a leading figure worldwide in the global justice movement that emerged most dramatically in the international mass actions of Seattle, Quebec, Genoa, Prague, and elsewhere.
“His passion for justice in our native African continent has now long extended to the whole world where the abyss between rich and poor countries grows instead of closing,” commented his friend Nadine Gordimer. “Dennis’s passion is the real face of globalization.”
Dennis was incredibly accessible to a broad range of us who were activists in Pittsburgh, and relationships developed that had meaning for all concerned. He spoke at socialist forums that I helped to organize in Pittsburgh, and he gave me incredibly meaningful encouragement as I sought to develop a body of Marxist writings that would be helpful to activists of today and tomorrow — all the while urging me and others to do this in a way that was open, non-dogmatic, and framed in terms to which those unfamiliar with left-wing jargon could connect.
In the wake of the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil, to which he had journeyed in 2002, he initiated the organization of an ongoing Pittsburgh Social Forum in which many of us became involved for a couple of years — and some of us followed him to future World Social Forums in Brazil and India.
One of the striking features in the way he communicated, in his political talks at various events, was his consistent avoidance of what I have seen less effective left-wing speakers do: trying to fit the entire revolution into one presentation (which means unloosing an avalanche of quickly-made points that inundate the listeners and make it impossible for them to absorb, let alone reflect on what is being said).
In a typical Dennis Brutus talk, he will speak slowly and eloquently, letting you know that he has three or four specific points that he wishes to make. He tells you what they are at the beginning of his comments. Then he visits each one in turn, using a memorable example, image, statistic, with spare but telling rhetoric. This coincides with aspects of his poetry. As he explains in his interview with Lamont Steptoe (204): “So you can see I’m shooting for the minimum. Always as compact as I can make it.”
There is an Asian influence here, which he discussed in an earlier collection, China Poems (Austin: University of Texas, 1975, 35, 36):
“The trick is to say little (the nearer to nothing, the better) and to suggest much — as much as possible. The weight of meaning hovers around the words (which should be as flat as possible) or is brought by the reader/hearer. Non-emotive, near neutral sounds should generate unlimited resonances in the mind; the delight is in the tight-rope balance between nothing and everything possible, between saying very little and implying a great deal.”
An illustration from that volume:
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Not in my hands |
There were other qualities of this man that I was able to see during an unfortunate experience. He had invited me to participate with him in a conference on Latin America and revolutionary struggles sponsored by Larry Robin, of Robins Bookstore in Philadephia — but when I got there, I found he had just thrown out his back and was in agony.
A wheelchair was commandeered, and I pushed him along Philadelphia sidewalks to a hospital and then to the office of a doctor. At various points, only slightly under his breath, there were mutterings that turned out to be poetry — elements of poems that he was playing with, almost like breathing.
Nor would he tolerate being away from the conference for very long, and I wheeled him into a session — Dennis looking quite disheveled, still in pain, but insistent on being there, and it seemed to me then that revolutionary politics, too, was almost like breathing to him.
When I returned with him to Pittsburgh, and insisted on cleaning his apartment for him while he was laid up, I gathered together — to toss into a big garbage bag — various scraps of paper, old envelopes, napkins, among pizza boxes in the kitchen, only to discover with horror what Lamont Steptoe comments on in his interview (208): “Dennis, you write on scraps of paper, envelopes, napkins.”
I had come close to destroying many unpublished poems by an internationally renowned poet! I humbly piled the scraps onto the corner of the table.
The poems and the politics were inseparable from his daily life, and he asked me to attend a poetry reading on his behalf, sponsored by the Carnegie Library, on the struggles against censorship. The poems he selected were from a wonderful little booklet of his poems (this one edited by Gil Ott) from Lamont Steptoe’s publishing project, Airs and Tributes (Camden, NJ: Whirlwind Press, 1989), most of which cannot be found in the two just-published volumes.
He made selections, patiently explained the poems to me so that I could explain them to the audience, and sent me on my way. The one I loved the best was For Ruth First (13), the heroic South African Communist (portrayed by Barbara Hershey in the fine film, A World Apart, which among other things depicts the imprisonment she described in her book 117 Days).
Ruth First was assassinated in 1982 by letter bomb, while in Mozambique, courtesy of the racist apartheid regime:
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They would come again |
Dennis’s own “dear restless spirit” has endured — and his body has healed. Recently returned to live in his native land as he nears the age of 84, he continues in his life of poetry and protest.
An interviewer once asked him, “How would you like history to remember you?” Dennis answered: “I don’t care.” He explained to me, later, that what counts for him are not nostalgic memories that romanticize who he is, but rather the struggles of today and tomorrow, “the thousands willing to fight for freedom,” that can make a difference in the lives of those who remain.
South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu once commented that the anti-apartheid struggle “had none more articulate and with all the credibility and integrity so indispensable than Dennis Brutus to plead our cause.”
This could be said also of his role in the struggle for global justice — except that the notion of “pleading” seems off. Perhaps it is more accurate to say that he eggs us on, helps us to understand more deeply, encourages us to connect with each other and to move forward.
These books can help with that.
ATC 129, July–August 2007