25 Facts About Dennis Brutus

Dennis Vincent Brutus was a South African activist, educator, journalist and poet best known for his campaign to have South Africa banned from the Olympic Games due to its racial policy of apartheid.

Dennis Brutus's parents moved back home to Port Elizabeth when he was aged four, and young Brutus was classified under South Africa's apartheid racial code as "coloured".

Dennis Brutus taught English and Afrikaans at several high schools in South Africa after 1948, but was eventually dismissed for his vocal criticism of apartheid.

Dennis Brutus served on the faculty of the University of Denver, Northwestern University and University of Pittsburgh, and was a Professor Emeritus from the last institution.

In 2008, Dennis Brutus was awarded the Lifetime Honorary Award by the South African Department of Arts and Culture for his lifelong dedication to African and world poetry and literary arts.

Dennis Brutus was an activist against the apartheid government of South Africa in the 1950s and 1960s.

Dennis Brutus learned politics in the Trotskyist movement of the Eastern Cape.

Dennis Brutus joined the Anti-Coloured Affairs Department organisation, a Trotskyist group that organised against the Coloured Affairs Department, which was an attempt by the government to institutionalise divisions between blacks and coloureds.

In 1962, Dennis Brutus was a co-founder of the South African Non-Racial Olympic Committee, an organisation that would be heavily influential in the banning of apartheid-era South Africa from the Olympics in 1964.

In 1961, Dennis Brutus was banned for his political activities as part of SANROC.

In 1963, Dennis Brutus was arrested for trying to meet with an International Olympic Committee official; he was accused of breaking the terms of his "banning," which were that he could not meet with more than two people outside his family, and he was sentenced to 18 months in jail.

Dennis Brutus was in the cell next to Nelson Mandela's.

Dennis Brutus was in prison when news of the country's suspension from the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, for which he had campaigned, broke.

Dennis Brutus was forbidden to teach, write and publish in South Africa.

The book received the Mbari Poetry Prize, awarded to a black poet of distinction, but Dennis Brutus turned it down on the grounds of its racial exclusivity.

Dennis Brutus went into exile in Britain, where he first met George Houser, the executive director of the American Committee on Africa.

In 1967, Dennis Brutus came to the United States under the auspices of the ACOA on a speaking tour, where he acquainted Americans more closely with the present situation in South Africa, informed American sports organisations about the segregated conditions that South African athletes must endure, and raised money to support the ACOA's Africa Defense and Aid Fund to support the defence of those charged under the apartheid laws.

In 1971, Dennis Brutus settled in the United States, where he served as professor of African Literature at Northwestern University.

Dennis Brutus continued to participate in protests against the apartheid government while teaching in the United States.

Dennis Brutus was eventually "unbanned" by the South African government in 1990, and in 1991 he became one of the sponsors of the Committee for Academic Freedom in Africa.

Dennis Brutus taught at Amherst College, Cornell University, and Swarthmore College, before heading, in 1986, to the University of Pittsburgh, where he served a professor of African Literature until his retirement.

Dennis Brutus returned to South Africa and was based at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, where he often contributed to the annual Poetry Africa Festival hosted by the university and supported activism against neo-liberal policies in contemporary South Africa through working with NGOs.

In December 2007, Dennis Brutus was to be inducted into the South African Sports Hall of Fame.

Dennis Brutus died on 26 December 2009, aged 85, at his home in Cape Town, South Africa, from prostate cancer.

Dennis Brutus is survived by two sisters, eight children including his son Anthony, nine grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren.