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Johannes A. Smit
cover the first phase of Brutus’s life during which he became conscious of
the challenges for non-racialism, his rise to prominence in the anti-apartheid
movement in South Africa, the nature and dynamics of his commitment to
non-racialism and the ‘human spirit’, and his focus on sport activism in
practice internationally (1946 - 1980). Needless to say, the wisdom of
hindsight often obscures the dynamics and fury of the turbulence of current
junctures and the ebb and flow of the complex hegemonic and counterhegemonic
forces in the global political ocean. As all who have met Dennis
Brutus personally know, Dennis was a veteran in negotiating the clashing
views and personalities in the midst of discursive turbulence and instability.
It is at this, the highest level of abstraction that the main contention of this
article is that it was Brutus’s commitment to non-racialism and the ‘freedom
of the human spirit’ that served as navigating mechanism through all such
turmoil – turmoil epitomized in the nature of his poetry 8
.
1 Human Rights and the Apartheid Ideology
1.1 The Founding of International Human Rights
The General Assembly of the United Nations adopted and proclaimed the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights on December 10, 1948. On May 26
of the same year, the Reformed National Party, under its banner of
‘apartheid’, won the elections in South Africa. Yet, whereas the dominant
white racist ideology of apartheid aimed at instituting and enforcing racial
segregation at all levels in the polity – that would drive racial groups ever
further apart while inevitably mainly benefiting whites – the international
progressive enlightened forces opened a different space – that of the
‘recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of
all members of the human family’. Significantly this first segment continues.
8 The article does not address this matter in Brutus’s oeuvre, except for
referring to his views on political commitment in poetry and writing. Cf. the
very comprehensive study edited by McLucky and Colbert (1995) though. It
divides into five sections. Sections one, three, four and five comprise one,
three, two and again one contribution each. Section two, however, which
forms the central part of the book, comprise of ten chapters, each dealing
with one of Brutus’s poetry collections.
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