[DEBATE] : (Fwd) Activist poet Dennis Brutus to receive honorary doctorates from NMMU & Rhodes, April 17th

[Patrick Bond]

Activist and poet, Professor Dennis Vincent Brutus, in recognition of 
his contributions to South African letters and to human rights, 
democracy and justice, will receive Doctor of Literature degrees from 
both Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University and Rhodes University on 
April 17th.

Two honorary doctorates are to be conferred on UKZN Centre for Civil 
Society Honorary Professor (and renowned poet), Dennis Brutus, on April 
17. The Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University and Rhodes University 
will be honouring him in this way.  Paterson High School, where he was 
educated and later taught, will host an alumni celebration on April 16th 
at The Southend Museum in Port Elizabeth.

Amongst Africa's best-known poets, Dennis Brutus was born in Harare 
(then Salisbury) in 1924. He was educated in Port Elizabeth, including 
Paterson High School (where he later taught) and Schauderville High 
School, before entering Fort Hare University on full scholarship in 
1940. He graduated with a distinction in English and a second major in 
Psychology, and studied law at the University of the Witwatersrand, 
until his arrest at the South African Olympics Committee office in 1963. 
He is presently Honorary Professor at the University of KwaZulu-Natal 
Centre for Civil Society and Professor Emeritus at the University of 
Pittsburgh Departments of English and Africana Studies (which he chaired 
from 1975-78). He was formerly professor at Northwestern University 
English Department, visiting professor at the Universities of Denver and 
Texas, and Distinguished Visiting Humanist at the University of 
Colorado. He has lectured worldwide as well as in South Africa, and was 
appointed Research Fellow at the University of Durban-Westville in 1997.

He holds six honorary doctorates, including from University of 
Durban-Westville (now UKZN). He was the recipient of the Langston Hughes 
Award in 1987 (the first non-African American to receive that award), 
and was honoured with the first Paul Robeson Award in 1989 for artistic 
excellence, political consciousness and integrity. He was one of the 
first South African poets to be widely read internationally, and his 
work found early critical acclaim. His first book, Sirens, Knuckles, 
Boots was published by Mbari Press at Ibaden University, Nigeria in 1963 
(he won the Mbari Literary Prize but turned it down on grounds of racial 
exclusivity), at a time he was imprisoned for defying a banning order by 
the apartheid government. This banning was the result of his ultimately 
successful campaign to desegregate the South African Olympic team.

After being shot in the back by the Special Branch secret police during 
an escape attempt in 1963, and then breaking rocks for 18 months at 
Robben Island prison alongside Nelson Mandela, Brutus was exiled in 
1965. He resumed simultaneous careers as a poet and anti-apartheid 
campaigner, and in 1968 was instrumental in achieving the apartheid 
regime's expulsion from the Mexican Olympics and then in 1970 from the 
Olympic movement. He won numerous awards for poetry, and helped organize 
key African writers organizations with his colleagues Wole Soyinka and 
Chinua Achebe. Upon moving to the U.S., Brutus served in several 
academic positions, defeating high-profile efforts by the Reagan 
Administration to deport him (1980-83). Following the transition to 
democracy in South Africa, Brutus remained active with grassroots social 
movements in his home country and internationally. In the late 1990s he 
became a pivotal figure in the global justice movement and a featured 
speaker each year at the World Social Forum. In the anti-racism, 
reparations and economic justice movements, he continues to serve as a 
leading strategist. In South Africa, he is a key figure in the Social 
Movements Indaba, a coalition of progressive activists, and Jubilee 
South Africa. In 2006 he published the autobiographical book Poetry and 
Protest (Haymarket Press and UKZN Press). In 2007 he was inducted into 
the Sports Hall of Fame but turned down the honour on grounds of 
residual racism in professional sports. In 2008 he received the South 
African Literary Award for Distinguished Lifetime Literary Achievement.

Brutus's poetry collections are:
* Sirens Knuckles and Boots (Mbari Productions, Ibaden, Nigeria and 
Northwestern University Press, Evanston Illinois, 1963).
* Letters to Martha and Other Poems from a South African Prison 
(Heinemann, Oxford, 1968).
* Poems from Algiers(African and Afro-American Studies and Research 
Institute, Austin, Texas, 1970).
* A Simple Lust (Heinemann, Oxford, 1973).
* China Poems (African and Afro-American Studies and Research Centre, 
Austin, Texas, 1975).
* Strains (Troubador Press, Del Valle, Texas).
* Stubborn Hope (Three Continents Press, Washington, DC and Heinemann, 
Oxford, 1978).
* Salutes and Censures (Fourth Dimension, Enugu, Nigeria, 1982).
* Airs & Tributes (Whirlwind Press, Camden, New Jersey, 1989).
* Still the Sirens (Pennywhistle Press, Santa Fe, New Mexico, 1993).
* Remembering Soweto, ed. Lamont B. Steptoe (Whirlwind Press, Camden, 
New Jersey, 2004).
* Leafdrift, ed. Lamont B. Steptoe (Whirlwind Press, Camden, New Jersey, 
2005).
* Poetry and Protest: A Dennis Brutus Reader (Haymarket Books, Chicago 
and University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, Pietermaritzburg, 2006).

      link to intinery - http://www.ukzn.ac.za/ccs/default.asp?2,68,3,1692

Oliver Meth
University of KwaZulu Natal
Centre for Civil Society
Howard College Campus
Durban
T: +27 (0)31 260 3577
F: +27 (0)31 260 2502
M: +27 (0)79 584 4313
W: www.ccs.ukzn.ac.za