27 Dennis Brutus

Dr. Ritika Batabyal

Introduction

In this module we would be discussing the South African poet and literary activist, Dennis Brutus and reading some of his poems. Dennis Brutus was born in Harare, Zimbabwe in the year 1924 of South African “coloured” parents and grew up in the Eastern Cape town of Port Elizabeth. During mid-twentieth century Dennis Brutus was one of the foremost poets associated with the literature of protest against apartheid in South Africa. His most discussed poems are political lyrics. He died in Cape Town in 2009.

Major Themes of Poems

These political lyrics are intensely personal poems that focus on the fundamental political issues in South Africa during the mid-twentieth century. The oeuvre of Dennis Brutus comprises poems in which he brings out the feelings of his oppressed countrymen in an apartheid ridden state. His early poems show how racism had permeated every aspect of South African life through a personal account of how it affected his life and education in South Africa. For instance, Brutus studied law in the University of Witwatersrand but he was not allowed to practice as a lawyer by the government, because he was coloured. The expression of the intensely personal experience of race, was however also the experience of the segregated South African society as a whole: this is why his poems are called ‘political lyrics’, though in general we do not bring these two genre descriptions together. That Dennis Brutus was able to do this testifies to his poetic ability.

Life of Dennis Brutus

Brutus was interested in activities related to sports which brought him face to face with the politics of racism in South Africa in a formidable way. Sports are an activity that should remain divorced from politics. But in South Africa things were different with apartheid, an official policy of the South African government. Brutus was completely disillusioned with this policy of racial segregation that was being practiced within the arena of sports. By this policy of racial separation the whites were provided better facilities and opportunities in sports activities.

Brutus was instrumental in founding the South African Sports Association in 1959 in order to overcome racial discrimination. Initially the government ignored his activities. Ultimately he was banned from taking part in politics and from writing. He was also not permitted to hold his teaching position when he tried to organize a “Coloured National Convention” in 1961. During this time the government had the power to arrest and even imprison people without charges or trials. In 1963 Brutus, although being banned, attended the meeting of the South African Olympic Committee held at Johannesburg. Immediately he was arrested but was released on bail. Brutus escaped to Mozambique where he was arrested again by the Portuguese colonial authority and was sent back to South Africa.

As his recapture was not made public his relatives and friends remained under the impression that he was out of the country. This gave the opportunity to the South African Bureau of State Security (BOSS) to do whatever they wanted to do with him without anyone coming to know about it. In order to attract public attention and to make his return known to everybody Brutus attempted to escape and was shot in the back. After his recovery he was sentenced to eighteen months imprisonment in the Robben Island.

Apartheid and the South African situation

It was under this condition of political, social and economic repression as practised by the apartheid state that the literary activity of Brutus came to the fore. The repressive legislation in South Africa had hindered the work of the literary artist. Various acts were passed which had censorship provision revealing the South African government’s desire to control the freedom of expression of the people. For instance there were the Entertainment (Censorship) Act (1931), Customs Act (1955), Extension of University Education Act (1959), Unlawful Organizations Act (1960), Publication and Entertainments Act (1963), General Law Amendment Act (1963) to mention a few.

All these acts reveal how the public in general and the literary artist in particular had to work under an extremely stifling socio political environment. The Publications Control Board not only decided what can be published but also kept a watch on the writer’s/poet’s political inclinations, whether he is banned from attending public gatherings or not. Hence the content of the book did not always determine its possibility of publication within the apartheid state. Under the given condition it becomes amply clear that the writer cannot remain in an ivory tower or detached from the divorced from the plight of the people and the injustice faced by them every day. In this module we have tried to a brief overview of the apartheid situation in South Africa.

Major Works

The poems of Dennis Brutus give voice to the oppression of the people in South Africa due to the policy of racial segregation. They contain a sense of agony and frustration in the face of racial separation and violence, mental and physical, that results from it. These relate the sufferings of the people who are victims of this policy of apartheid to his personal experience of arrests, harassments and imprisonments. In his poems one witnesses his social responsibility as a South African poet—as Brutus had once remarked “I think it is simply true that an artist, a writer, is a man who lives in a particular society and takes his images and ideas from that society”.

South Africa under apartheid was almost like a prison state whose only aim was to create a ‘white utopia’ by controlling and repressing the people of other races. So, as Brutus says, in the condition of socio political repression to which the South Africans are subjugated, the works of the literary artist are bound to express the sufferings and oppressions of the people. The literary artist and the activist in South Africa consider it their responsibility to show the world the actual reality of the apartheid state.

Collections of Poems

In 1963, while Brutus was sentenced to imprisonment at Robben Island his first collection of poems was published by Mbari Press in Nigeria. This first collection of poems was called Sirens Knuckles Boots. As the name suggests the poems in this collection show the atrocities of the apartheid regime and how it represses the people both physically and mentally. The apartheid state did not permit the political prisoners to write but personal correspondence was allowed. Brutus made use of this clause and wrote a series of verse letters to his sister-in-law, Martha Jaggers describing his prison experiences. In 1969 while he was in exile these correspondences were published with the title, Letters to Martha and Other Poems from a South African Prison.

After his release from prison Brutus was under home arrest and his activities were tremendously curtailed. During this time the South African government began to issue ‘cancelled’ permit in order to get rid of politically undesirable people. Brutus to ok advantage of this and with his family he went to exile. Brutus became active in anti-apartheid protests. He was the founder and became the president of the South African Non-Racial Olympic Committee which came to be known as SAN ROC. He was instrumental in effecting South Africa’s expulsion from the Olympic Games because of its policy of racial segregation in sports. This shows Brutus’s intimate association with South African politics even while in exile.

He went across the world, with a political agenda against apartheid. He translated his experiences from these travels into poetry. His collection of verse, Poems from Algiers was one such collection which deals with his experiences of what it means to be both an artist and an African. The book was published in 1970. The next collection of poems China Poems was published in 1975. In contrast to his earlier poems which maintained simplicity of both language and structure, the China Poems showed a marked adherence to the haiku style of verse. It is generally considered that Brutus came in touch with the haiku style while his stay in Beijing. The poems which he wrote during the 1980s also deals with political issues but in these poems Brutus no longer remained limited to the political problems of South Africa but widened his vision to include the state of other politically tumultuous countries like Nicaragua and Chile. Apart from these, other poems written during this period were poetic praises to Brutus’s political heroes like Nelson Mandela and Oliver Tambo.

Poetry and Protest

Brutus uses various genres of poetry to protest against the atrocities of apartheid. Majority of the poems of Brutus are shorn of all poetic ornamentation, and speak directly to the readers since his purpose is to make the readers connect with his experiences in an apartheid South Africa and understand what it means to live within a racially segregated country. Making the readers conscious of the history of his people is one of the concerns of the poet. Most of his poems are marked by brevity of style and an intense power of observation. There is a personal manner in which the poet talks in his poems and the terse and direct use of language addresses the readers more directly and powerfully than ordinary speech.

The imagery Brutus uses brings the material reality of an oppressive regime and the heroic resistance that gives human dignity to those who bear and challenge its atrocities. In the poems of Brutus reverberates the deep and sincere voice of an individual for whom the value of freedom is of utmost importance. His poems reveal a struggle to become free and thereby live with complete human dignity. The poetic voice never stops from accusing and questioning the immorality of the apartheid policy. Brutus wants to awaken the anger of the oppressed people in such a manner that they protest and act against racial discrimination. In this module we have tried to provide the collections of poems written by Brutus and discuss the important themes of his poems and analyze the style of his composition in a nutshell.

Analysis of Poems 

In this module we will analyze some of the poems written by Brutus. These poems have been selected on the basis of their popularity, and their representation of Brutus’s concern for the repressed in an apartheid country.

The Sounds Begin Again

This poem makes us feel the experience of racial discrimination and oppression by translating it in to a lyric cry, a process which is central to many poems of Brutus. This is ‘heard’ by the reader through a chain of sounds that move towards the centre of the self. The sound of the siren leads to the thunder at the door and this in turn tears through the entire being and one can hear the very physical – though silent sound, the shriek of nerves in pain.

The sounds begin again;

The siren in the night

The thunder at the door

The shriek of nerves in pain.

These sound images bring to the fore the frequent raids of the South African security police in the residential areas of the “black” and “coloured” South Africans in the darkness of the night. During these raids, the sirens of the police van rent the air. Immediately afterwards follow the knock at the door and then the physical blows, signalling atrocities and torture. The result “Then the keening crescendo/of faces split by pain” (Simple Lust, 1985: 19). The poem powerfully presents this movement of sounds and the final explosion of the sounds translates this physical torture in to a lyric cry. There is a subtle but important change between the first and last line of the poem. “The sounds begin again” in the first line of the poem changes to “my sounds begin again” in the last line of the poem. This change brings out the internalisation process where the sounds of raids and torture, results of the state’s suppression of its citizens, through the speaker’s personal sufferings become “my sounds”. This process of internalisation is the dynamic force that brings into being the political lyrics of Brutus.

What Do They Expect from Me?

In “What Do They Expect from Me?” the poet in an earnest voice answers the question asked and challenges those compatriots who are losing the drive to go on fighting against apartheid.

When the poet exhorts “them to pursue the lines / that brought me where I am /they shrink, or find excuse”. Although his voice shows frustration and disappointment, the poet does not hesitate to express his determination and faith in the fighters who will not waver from their duty and will carry on the fight against apartheid loyally. Thus the poem sustains a hope in the face of odds. This hope and optimism are melded in Brutus’s poems with the stark realities of a facist apartheid regime.

Hold Me, My Dear, Hold Me

In “Hold Me, My Dear, Hold Me” one finds this sense of optimism in the face of the torture and hardship that the poet experiences within prison. He expresses the positive qualities of humanity to his readers and the images express the faith Brutus has in the power of love to combat the oppressive nature of apartheid. Thus he declares,

let me be assured of this

amid the buffets of metal

is still a possible tenderness.

This feeling of “tenderness” is a recurrent one in many of the poems of Brutus. Tenderness is an emotional quality which is essential for poetry and also for the survival of humanity.

Somehow we survive

As Brutus says “Somehow we survive/and tenderness, frustrated, does not wither” (A Simple Lust, 1985: 4). The existence of tenderness amidst all the carnage is important as it announces the revival of human life. The poem then lists a series of oppression and injustice unleashed by the apartheid regime on the people. For instance the poet says, “Investigating searchlights rake/our naked unprotected contours:…boots club the peeling door”. The poem ends with a little variation of the beginning line, “but somehow tenderness survives”. This survival of tenderness leads to the survival of a human voice in apartheid South Africa. Brutal torture has made the land “scarred with terror” and has made the land and the people “unlovely and unlovable” yet tenderness can survive in South Africa and from this comes the hope that the power of tenderness will one day decimate the atrocities of the apartheid policy.

A Common Hate Enriched Our Love and Us

In the poem “A Common Hate Enriched Our Love and Us” (A Simple Lust, 1985: 22) the poet says, “hate gouged out deeper levels of our passion-/a common hate enriched our love and us”. The poem thus changes the torment of apartheid into an aesthetic of pain and heart-breaking hope in the power of love. Another poem “Perhaps” brings out the transient nature of imprisonment. Thus the poem reveals hope and it assures the people that if they have faith in themselves they can achieve a future in which they will have what they are now deprived of.

What exists at the present time is nothing in comparison to what they deserve. Thus the poem subtly urges the people to fight for their rights with a positive hope.

Mob” and Letters to Martha

The poem “Mob” (A Simple Lust, 1985: 48) describes a white mob attacking a group of ‘black’ protestors and unleashing violence upon them. The poet here tries to weld his community together by transforming brutality and violence into passion. Thus in the face of the discriminatory policy adopted by the apartheid state Brutus desires to bind the community into a single unit. One can thus understand that although Brutus is writing poems protesting against the apartheid policy yet the poems are not all bleak and dark under the burden of suffering, pain and racial discrimination. There is hope and a positive spirit that articulates a promise for better times and a faith in humanity.

The poems of Letters to Martha are perfect examples of unadorned poems which have the power to capture and represent the horrors of imprisonment in apartheid South Africa. These poems are bereft of artifice and have an intensely sincere, honest voice that show the poet’s desire for freedom for his countrymen. The first few poems describe extreme fear that exists within the prison cells. This constant fear factor that the apartheid government successfully inculcates within the political prisoners kills the individual mentally and psychologically before he is killed physically. “After the Sentence” articulates this fear when it says, the prisoners hear of “the load of the approaching days” and the brutal treatment in prisons they are told that the only consoling factor is “the knowledge of those/who endure much more/and endure…” Apart from this fear element Brutus also stresses on fact that the prisoners are separated from the world of nature inside the prisons and this creates a claustrophobic situation for them. In Letters to Martha poem no. 17 stresses on this when the poet says,

The complex aeronautics

Of the birds

And their exuberant aerobatics

Become matters for intrigued speculation

And wonderment;

Natural things like the birds and their flight becomes rare as prisoners are kept in seclusion and in hostile confinement. The picture of the birds flying high is in direct contrast with the situation of the prisoners whose freedom and movement is strictly curtailed. The very picture of the free birds makes the prisoners desirous of freedom and they understand the value of being free. Poem number 18 from this collection also presents a similar situation where the prisoner who wants to see the stars clearly through his prison window turns off the corridor light as it hinders his view of the sky. This audacity of the prisoner angers the guards and “it is the brusque inquiry/and threat/that I remember of that night/rather than the stars”. This remark epitomises both physical and mental violence and brutality that the non-white population in apartheid South Africa underwent. In another poem “On the Island 1”, the poet says,

Cement-grey floors and

walls Cement-grey days

Cement-grey time

And a grey susurration

The poem reveals the loneliness of the prisoner. On the other hand the repetition of the word “cement-grey” evinces the complete bleak, emotionless and death- like coldness of the prison cells. It also brings out the monotonous and stagnant life of the prison depriving the prisoner of his human qualities. This monotonous and stagnant situation of prison life is emphasised in the last line, “one locked in a grey gelid stream/of unmoving time”. While in exile Brutus constantly wrote for the tortured and oppressed people of South Africa under the apartheid regime. In the poem “In the dove-grey dove-soft dusk” (A Simple Lust, 1985: 101). Brutus talks of the “agonizing poignant urgent simple desire/simply to stroll in the quiet dusk”. Since he is in exile and therefore free Brutus can fulfil this wish of his. But at the same time he feels for his fellows back home who could not satisfy their simple desires thus he says, “as I do now, and they do not”.

The last two poems we will discuss in this module are “I am the exile” (A Simple Lust, 1985: 137) and “A troubadour, I traverse all my land” (A Simple Lust, 1985: 2). There is a similarity between both the poems as we find that in both poems the poet compares himself with a troubadour but there is a change in role. The troubadour sang of love for his mistress and travelled from one place to another. But here in apartheid South Africa the poet sings of his love for his country, from which he is forced to part because of the resistance to its policies of exclusion and violence. In the first poem the poet says that this troubadour seems apparently calm and gentle. He maintains the visage of servility but the depth of his heart is filled with the sounds of wailings and in his head hears “the cries and sirens”. Thus the poet compares his situation with that of the troubadour. In the present condition in apartheid South Africa the sounds of the sirens, the torture and the cries of pain are the only sounds that the troubadour can hear and write about. The traditional element of love for his mistress is now altered: the troubadour now sings of his love for his country.

Thus in the second poem the poet says “no mistress-favour has adorned my breast/only the shadow of an arrow-brand”. The troubadour’s song in the present time tells not of Cupid’s arrow but of the prisoner’s arrow-brand. This is the paradox between the traditional troubadour singing of his love for his mistress and that of the present day poet singing of his love for his country, apartheid South Africa. Hence the poet successfully transfers the love that exists between the lover and his mistress within the codes of chivalry to that between an individual and his country. In this module we have analysed some of the poems of Brutus.

Conclusion

We have already discussed some poems of Brutus and the style of his poems. Though he is writing poems of revolt and protest, they are free from clichéd descriptions. The imagery used is startling and direct, and has the power to drive home subtly but emphatically the condition of the non-whites in apartheid South Africa. Brutus’s success is the quality of his imagery (Heywood, 143) and the controlled use of language. There is no excess nor any exaggeration in his descriptions of prison life or the violence that is unleashed upon the people in South Africa. The poetry of Brutus keeps alive the memory of the violent injustice that the non-whites in South Africa were victims of. Brutus speaks against the wrongs committed by the apartheid regime but he does so in a restrained voice. By doing this he appeals to the sense of right inherent in every individual in a country where these rights have been denied for long. Thus his poetry gives the opportunity to assert one’s humanity and speaks scathingly about the apartheid policy which dehumanises the individual. In this module we have tried to understand the poems of Brutus and their subtle depiction of the reality of apartheid South Africa.