I first met Dennis Brutus in the early 1980’s when I attended an African Literature Conference, held in the United States. Being in exile, he was happy to meet a fellow South African. He remembered my husband, Herby, as they were at Fort Hare together. We were very happy to renew our friendship when he came back to South Africa after 1994. He would speak of “the return of the native” – an amusing reference to one of Thomas Hardy’s novels. Dennis was a consummate patriot and a world citizen – he did not give up fighting for a just democracy, both locally and globally.
For Dennis Brutus
You touched the simple and lofty
with spirited words,
impelled by your native humanity.
You stood tall before the powerful,
speaking at every moment,
against the menace of injustice.
You endured your captivity
and the perils of the assassin’s bullet
with stubborn hope.
You made your home
wherever you could find a resting place
for truth and honour.
You bemoaned a world that has
lost its compass and you worked
to steer it back to its contract.
You railed against the fleshpots of greed
and bemoaned a world
heady with excess.
You used the weapon of poetry
to sear hearts and minds
with beauty and longing.
You dreamed of a planet
healed of its innumerable fissures
and filled with love.
When we think of you –
your words, your gait, your stature –
“somehow tenderness survives”.
