CHAPTER FOUR
Remembering Apartheid: The Poetry of Dennis Brutus
A close examination of Dennis Brutus’s life and verse will reveal that three major issues pre-occupied his mental consciousness, namely, the menace of apartheid, the theme of love, and the role of poetic art in human society. These three major issues predominate in his poetry and they are what this essay sets out to discuss.
The life of Dennis Brutus was a complex and complicated one, especially when viewed against a backdrop of the apartheid policy. Born in 1924, in Salisbury, Rhodesia, he migrated with his parents to South Africa at an early age, receiving his tertiary education at the Fort Hare University where he obtained his Bachelor of Arts degree.
The first part of my title, “Remembering apartheid,” suggests something momentous and titanic, but ominous of evil in its intentions and practices: full of violence, roughness and human degradations in every form. The apartheid policy, that is, was an ugly phenomenon which Brutus fought hard against during most of his life. This is how Dapo Adeleke describes the situation in his book, Mandela:
In those days in South Africa, the white settlers considered themselves superior to the black South African people. Although the whites were in minority of about 13% of the black African population, they were very powerful. They took over the land from the African people and put its control under the white minority government. Africans who desired land for their farming were given a little portion on which they paid rent to the government… The government made wicked racial laws which discriminated against the black South Africans. These laws were known as Pass Laws.1
This is how Brutus himself experienced apartheid:
…I was banned from writing and I was banned from publishing anything. These two bans were not directly served upon me. As a result of an Act of around about 1961, which was designed to punish people who committed sabotage, and as a result of the interpretation of this Act, I was banned from writing. But after I was released from prison in 1965, after I had been on Robben Island, the bans which had been served on me were all lifted the day before I was released and I was served with a new set of bans which run until 19702
The word, apartheid, to a considerable degree, completely defines the man Dennis Brutus, his poetry, and the age in which he lived. Without apartheid it is difficult to say whether the world would have been enriched by the poetic art which he bequeathed to it. Despite its ugliness and nastiness, the apartheid policy, which was enacted and perpetrated by the South African government for several years, did produce some great things of which the emergence and development of Dennis Brutus is a classic example. For instance, he succeeded in persuading the international community to ban South Africa
Furthermore, Brutus’s prodigious mind and versatility is suggested by the numerous literary works which he produced: Sirens, Knuckles, and Boots (1963), Letters to Martha and Other Poems from a South African Prison (1968), Poems from Algiers (1970), Thoughts Abroad (1970), Denver Poems (1970), A Simple Lust (1993), China Poems (1975), Stubborn Hope (1978), Salutes and Censures (1984), and Airs and Tributes (1989).
Finally, the Apartheid system was a debasing force, a dehumanizing phenomenon, and a disgrace to humanity. The losses suffered both economically and politically -- as far as human losses are concerned -- are too fundamental and momentous to evaluate or quantity.
The political battle which Brutus engages in in order to fight the scourge of apartheid can be seen in such poems like “A Troubadour I Traverse all my Land,” “This Sun on this Rubble After Rain,” and “Poems About Prison.” A distinct element which runs through the gamut of these poems is its tone of bitterness, frustration, and isolation, and a desire to resist and fight injustice through the force of the human will and his verse.
As a man who has suffered injustice and humiliation through the brutalities of the apartheid policy of the South African government, Brutus writes with sincerity, clarity and candor. In “A Troubadour I Traverse all my Land,” he says:
A troubadour, I traverse all my land
exploring all her wide-flung parts with zest
probing in motion sweeter far than rest
her secret thickets with an amorous hand:
and I have laughed, disdaining those who banned inquiry and
movement, delighting in the test
of will when doomed by sacracened arrest,
choosing, like unarmed thumb, simply to stand
Thus quixoting till a cast-off of my land
I sing and fare, person to loved-one pressed
Braced for this pressure and the captor’s hand
That snaps off service like a weathered strand:
-no mistress-favour has adorned my breast
Only the shadow of an arrow-brand.
In the above poem, Brutus articulates his predicament regarding the socio-political system of his country, including the consequences of such action. Like Blake in the poem “London,” where the protagonist has a panoramic assessment of the ills that afflict his society, in “A Troubadour” Brutus is concerned with the intolerable situation in his country. But while Blake’s focus situates within the city of London, Brutus’s poetic vision encompasses his entire country (“I traverse all my land/exploring all her wide-flung parts with zest/probing in motion sweeter far than rest.”)
The consequences of Brutus’s action include a “Saracened arrest,” “pressure” in “the captor’s hand,” “a weathered strand,” and “the shadow of an arrow-brand.” Again, like Blake in the “Chimney Sweeper” where the protagonist feels “happy & dance & sing” in the face of injury and grief, Brutus also can “sing and fare,” “disdaining those who banned inquiry and movement.”
In “London” Blake “wanders thro’ each charter’d street” in order to observe the goings on in the metropolitan city. In “A Troubador,” Brutus takes a more audacious enterprise, probing, prodding, and exploring through the entire country in search for justice, fairness, and accountability. The agony which Brutus experiences in this poem is most painfully articulated through the image “a cast off of my land.”
The reason for the comparison between Blake and Brutus is not only to highlight the predicament of the artist in playing his aesthic role in society, but to emphasize the fact that sometimes -- as in the case of Brutus -- the artist’s sense of obligation to his society entails grave consequences to his own personal well-bring and security.
In terms of style, the poem is a sonnet, of the Petrarchan mode, with the first eight lines of the octave rhyming abba, abba, and the concluding sestet rhyming aba aba. The traditional sonnest sequence, which Brutus employs here, suggests the traditional racism and humiliation to which the black man has been subjected all through the ages3. Similarly, the innovative rhyme scheme of the sestet, as it is employed here -- aba aba -- suggests the new dimension to which contemporary racism has brutally been taken by Brutus’s tormentors. The apartheid policy, as was practiced by the South African government,4 can be said to be the apogee of Western colonialism and racism.
While in “A Troubadour” Brutus’s political disappointment centers on “a cast off of my land,” in “This Sun on this Rubble After Rain” he stretches the political argument of the white exploitation and domination of South Africa
This sun on this rubble after rain.
Bruised though we must be
some easement we require
unarguably, though we argue against desire.
Under jackboots our bones and spirits crunch
forced into sweat-sodden slush
-now glow-lipped by this sudden touch:
-sun-stripped perhaps, our bones may later sing
or spell out some malignant nemesis
sharpevilled to spearpoints for revenging
but now our pride-dumbed mouths are wide
in wordless supplication
-are grateful for the least relief from pain.
-like this sun on this debris after rain.
The political instruments of the apartheid policy include kicking, slapping, torture, and maiming, as suggested by the following images and metaphors: “Bruished,” “some easement we require/unarguably,” “we argue against desire,” “under jackboots our bones and spirits crunch,” “forced into sweat-tear-sodden slush” and”some“malignant nemesis”.
The employment of the word “Sharpevilled” is important. It suggests the brutal shooting and killing on March 21, 1960, of 67 black South Africans by the South African police simply because they were protesting against the obnoxious pass laws. The city of Sharpeville in South Africa
The issue about land is very important in appreciating Brutus’s stubborn resistance to the apartheid policy. In “A Troubadour,” for instance, he laments “a cast off of my land.” In “This Sun on this Rubble After Rain,” he employs the words “Rubble” and “debris” to describe the mass destruction and devastation of a topographical landscape. The three words, “land,” “rubble,” and “debris,” collectively symbolize the earth’s surface which the white South African government mismanaged, misappropriated or stole from the majority of the South African peoples.
That Brutus is frustrated with the political system of his country is not in doubt (“but now our pride-dumbed mouths are wide/in wordless supplication”). That he is angry and bitter at a system that has completely dehumanized his people is equally not in doubt (“Sharpevilled to spearpoints for revenging”). Brutus remonstrates:
It is worth repeating that apartheid, the official ideology of the South African government is a racist ideology based not merely on the separation of the races, but on domination of the majority in a society by a minority. A system which denies blacks equal opportunities in work, equal housing, education, the whole range of human experience5.
As in “A Troubadour,” this poem is a sonnet but with a difference, for, while the former is Petrarchan, “This Sun on this Rubble” has no defined or definite rhyming pattern. This shows that Brutus is determined to experiment with any verse structure that, if possible, can meet his desired aesthetic and political goal. The almost repetitive first line (“This sun on this rubble after rain”) with the concluding last line (“like this sun on this debris after rain”) demonstrates Brutus’s desire to be experimental on anything that will enable him to accomplish his aesthetic objective.
In “Poems About Prison” Brutus recalls, with vivid details, macabre images of man’s inhumanity to man as experienced by a group of prisoners (including himself) on their way to the notorious Robben Island
For example: the prisoners walk without shoes; they are put in a dark room which is poorly ventilated; they are fed with sugarless pap; and they are compared to rats. The last lines of the poem present a shameful, pathetic picture: they illustrate the fact that the prisoners are doomed forever to their own fate:
they are worse than rats;
you can only shoot them’
Overhead
the large frosty glitter of the stars
the Southern Cross flowering low;
the chains on our ankles
and wrists
that pair us together
jangle
glitter
we begin to move
awkwardly.
Brutus has two principal affections, namely, the love for his country, and the love for womanhood. Of these two, it is difficult for the objective reader to determine precisely which of them predominates (although he himself says that the love of his country comes first “my land takes precedence of all my loves”). In “A Troubadour,” he writes enthusiastically about travelling “all my land” with “an amorous hand.” In the same poem, he laments the fact that, despite all his labors, he is “braced for this pressure and the captor’s hand.” The interplay between the love which the poet professes both for his fatherland and for womanhood is one of the memorable aspects of this poem. Brutus loves his country because he is patriotic; as a man, he needs the love of womanhood in order to fulfill his own destiny.
Brutus recognizes the fact that love, that is, whether for one’s country or for womanhood, entails enormous challenges and responsibilities. Consequently, in fighting for the land of his forebears, he encounters the sneers and jeers of his detractors who reward him with the “shadow of an arrow-brand.” Similarly, in seeking the affections of womanhood, he experiences frustration and disappointment (“no mistress-favour has adorned my breast.”)
It is interesting to note the pluralization of the phrase, “we argue against desire.” The expression not only suggests the collective effort made to wrest the usurped land from the tightly-fisted hands of the usurpers, but the socio-political battles which were fought both to gain independence and the freedom to reclaim what truly belongs to the peoples of South Africa. By employing this asthetic device, Brutus not only brings the audience to his side, he also adds credibility to this own ethos. Of course the land belongs to the entire South African peoples, and it is only proper and appropriate that the entire populace should fight for its reclamation.
Furthermore, in fighting for love of one’s country or for womanhood, Brutus believes, there is the need to keep all hopes alive despite seemingly intractable odds. The evil intentions and the tenacity of the South African government, as depicted in Brutus’s verse, are dreadful and daring (e.g., “the captor’s hand/that snaps off service like a weathered strand”), yet the poet is undaunted in his determination to accomplish his goal (“I traverse all my land/exploring all her wide-flung parts with zest/…disdaining those who banned inquiry and/movement”).
Brutus’s ability to employ a diversified aesthic structure is remarkable. For example, in “A Troubadour” he employs the first person singular pronoun “I” to describe his experience:
…I traverse all my land
…I have laughed, disdaining those who banned enquiry…
…I sing and fare, person to loved-one pressed
while in “This Sun on this Rubble after Rain,” he pluralizes human predicament:
…some easement we require
…we argue against desire
…our bones and spirits crunch
…our pride-dumbed mouths are wide
This varied literary skill not only demonstrates Brutu’s inventiveness, but also his ability to devise a poetics appropriate to his thematic objective.
Another person which also discusses the love of country and womanhood with similar effectiveness is: “It is the Constant Image of Your Face:”
It is the constant image of your face
framed in my hands as you knelt before my chair
the grave attention of your eyes
surveying me amid my world of knives
that stays with me, perennially accuses
and convicts me of heart’s-treachery;
and neither you nor I can plead excuses
for you, you know, can claim to loyalty --
my land takes precedence of all my loves.
Yet, I beg mitigation, pleading guilty
for you, my dear, accomplice of my heart
made, without words, such blackmail with your beauty
And preferred me such dear protectiveness
that I confess without remorse or shame
my still fresh treason to my country
and hope that she, my other, dearest love
will pardon freely, not attaching blame
being your mistress (or your match) in tenderness.
In the above poem, the land is presented as a woman who has all the virtues and potency of love and tenderness. To be sure, Brutus’s land has a physical attractiveness of womanhood: beautiful and elegant, sensual and sensuous, charming and gracious. Furthermore, the poem echoes Senghor’s amatory lyrics, where, for example, because the woman has a kind of Hellenic purism, the beloved is ready to pray, pine and submit to all her love entreaties without shame, or the loss of self-respect and dignity (e.g., see “I Will Pronounce Your Name.”) The direct and openly confessional images of the poem -- suggested by “your face/frame in my hands,” “your eyes/surveying me,” “the grave attention of your eyes,” “neither you nor I can plead excuses,” and the “accomplice of my heart” -- are vigorous and compelling. They connote and denote the kind of perfect paradigm usually associated with lovers in conjugal relationships.
The highpoint of the poem’s argument is brought to its crescendo when the poet suddenly declares, in an extempore mode, “my land takes precedence of all my loves.” From now on, the focus of interest and attention shifts entirely on the vast South African land (rich in mineral resources, for example), which is the priced-jewel of the apartheid South African government. From now on too, the reader’s attention focuses squarely on the devilish ways through which the apartheid government seeks to achieve its goals of appropriation and exploitation, including threats of “treason,” “blackmail,” and its subjugation of its innocent victims to “pleading guilty”).
The poem is rich in prosodic devices and metaphysical imagery. It is divided into two equal stanzas of nine lines each. The first stanza piles up images of affection one after the other. The second stanza suddenly takes a detour as the poet begins to talk of “mitigation,” “protectiveness,” and “pardon.” The image, “my other, dearest love,” is abstract; it conveys meaning only when the objective reader begins to decipher possible intentions and meaning. In this instance, it alludes to the different affections which begin to pre-occupy the poet’s inner consciousness: the first is his mistress, which he tacitly celebrates in the first stanza; the second is his fatherland, which has been taken over by the greedy South African government.
The image, “my world of knives,” suggests several possibilities. First, it alludes to the conflicting emotions -- that is, the love of country and the affections of womanhood -- which are passing through the poet’s psychological consciousness. Secondly, it alludes to the political battles which are raging through South Africa of which he is deeply involved: the arrests, the series of violence, killings, and the state of insecurity and threat to human life are foreboding, and are all carefully foreshadowed in the poem.
Other poetic and rhetorical devices abound. For example, there are echoes of Shakespeare (e.g., “my other, dearest love), Senghor (e.g., “you knelt before my chair”) and other writers. Further, the frequent employment of the first person pronoun “I” (“neither you nor I can plead excuses/…I beg mitigation/…I confess without remorse or shame”) has its antecedent and it is definitely a poetic and rhetorical device.
The fact that Brutus places his most striking and effective image at the end of the first stanza of the poem, that is, “my land takes precedence of all my loves,” is ingenious. To have highlighted it earlier or later, would not only have been lacking in technical virtuosity, but it would perhaps have robbed the poem of its rhetorical cast. By placing the image at the middle portion of the poem, it enables the serious and sophisticated reader to evaluate the expression against a backdrop of what has gone before and what is to follow. Further, the reader can thus effectively assess Brutus’s own claims and veracity, especially as they border on two different affections for two different entities. As professor John Povey notes,
…the sense of human love both personal and or are general, suffuses all of Brutus’ writing. By this tone, his poems assert more effectively than clamouring rhetoric the fact that love does survivie6
In his Preface to the Lyrical Ballads, Wordsworth outlines certain poetic principles and precepts, which, he believes, should inform the language of poetry. “I have proposed to myself to imitate, and, as far as possible, to adopt the very language of men... I have endeavoured to reject …mechanical devices of style.” Similarly, in discussing poetic art,”8 Brutus emphasizes the simplicity of language: “it does represent something I am trying to do, stripping my poetry down to a very bare, undecorated statement.”9
On the basis of the last statement we can say that Brutus echoes -- and perhaps adopts and adapts -- the Wordsworthian poetic credo. He believes in verse that is simple, precise, straight-forward and devoid of abstractions and metaphysical imagery. We shall illustrate this fact by discussing the first part of his untitled poem which he himself cites as an example of his poetic masterpiece:
Cold
The clammy cement
Sucks our naked feet
a rheumy yellow bulb
lights a damp gray wall
the stabled grass
wet wit three o’clock dew
is black with glittery edges;
we sit on the concrete
stuff with our fingers
the sugarless pap
into our mouths
then labour erect;
form lines’
steel ourselves into fortitude
or accept an image of ourselves
numb with resigned acceptance.
The clarity and simplicity of language, for which Brutus credits this poem, is not in doubt: the diction has no ambiguity; there are no abstract allusions and obscure references; and the imagery is appropriate and direct.
Furthermore, in line with what he characterizes as the poet’s responsibility to be able to address issues regarding human suffering (especially as in his own case)10, Brutus effectively articulates the state of the human predicament and dehumanization in apartheid South Africa, as suggested by the following images: “cold,” “clammy cement,” “we sit on the concrete,” “sugarless pap,” and “numb with resigned acceptance”.
A principle which Brutus believes in regarding poetic art, is that it should be devoid of “monotony.”11 Consequently, he employs diverse poetic and rhetorical strategies in his verse. A poetic device which Brutus employs with regularity and dexterity is irony, as when he argues in “A Common Hate Enriched our Love and Us,” for instance, that anger and retribution feed on one another. Thus just as the ruling minority elements in South Africa “hate” the majority elements for what they are, so also do the blacks hate the white elements for what they have unjustly subjected them to:
A common hate enriched our love and us
Escape to parasitic ease disgusts;
discreet expensive hushes stifled us
the plangent wines became acidulous
Rich foods knotted to revolting clots
of guilt and anger in our queasy guts
remembering the hungry comfortless.
In draughty angels of the concrete stairs
or seared by salt winds under brittle stars
we found a poignant edge to tenderness,
And, shaper than our strain, the passion
Against our land’s disfigurement and tension;
Hate gauged out deeper levels for our passion-
A common hate enriched our love and us
The poem is full of other poetic strategies. For instance, there is the repeated piling up of negative images upon negative images in order to illustrate the poem’s theme: “parasitic ease disgusts,” “revolting clots,” “expensive hushes stifled us,” “foods knotted to revolting clots,” “guilt and anger in our queasy guts,” “the hungry comfortless,” and “our land’s disfigurement and tension.” All of these negative images not only demonstrate the intolerable social-political situation in apartheid South Africa, they also suggest Brutus’s ability to invent a poetic phraseology that would enable him to address his subject matter.
Other poetic devices abound in the lyric. For example, it is a sonnet. However, while in “A Troubadour” Brutus employs the Petrarchan sonnet structure to develop his argument, in this sonnet the structure is neither Petrarchan nor Shakespearian, nor is it any of the other sonnet sequences that we are familiar with (the Miltonic or Spenserian, for example). This sonnet is entirely innovative and modern, as, for instance, its rhyme scheme suggests (a aaa aaa aaa bbb a). Furthermore, the poem’s circular structure, whereby its first line is repeated at the end (“A common hate enriched our love and us…), is innovative and ingenious as it enhances the poem’s dialectics.
A study of apartheid South Africa
Brutus knows that apartheid has its monstrosity and ugliness, but he equally recognizes the fact that the “wild beast” can be tamed. Consequently, although he fights and repudiates the apartheid South African government, he equally believes that the politics of tolerance, accommodation, dialogue, and persuasion can bring about positive change and thus humanize the soul. There is always hope and affirmation in Brutus’s political struggle, and he celebrates this belief in his poetics (see, e.g., “A Troubador” and “This Sun on this Rubble After Rain”).
Finally, through Brutus’s poetic art, we recognize the fact that he does not only write in the Wordsworthian mode -- where the simplicity of diction is paramount and is celebrated -- but where, as a poet, he must fight hard for what he believes in. Brutus recognizes the artist’s responsibility to his society. Consequently, he employs diverse rhetorical and poetic strategies in order to meet his aesthetic goals, including irony, the employment of free verse, the quatrain, the triplet measure and repetition. All of these diverse sources give a profound quality to his work.
Notes
1. See Nelson Mandela by Dapo Adeleke, Lantern Books (Lagos
2. See Dennis Brutus, “Protest Against Apartheid,” in Protest and Conflict in African Literaure, edited by Cosmos Pieterse & Donald Munro (London, Ibadan: Heinemann, 1978), p. 93.
3. For a detailed study of the black man’s “burden”, see Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (Abuja: Panal Publishing, Inc., 1972), pp. VIII-361.
4. As Professor R.N. Egudu notes, in Modern African Poetry and the African Predicament (London: Macmillan, 1978), p. 52, “Apartheid is a hydra-headed beast, which more than its mentor, colonialism, has brutalized and dehumanized the black South Africans.”
5. See Dennis Brutus, “Poetry of Suffering: The Black Experience,” in Ba Shiru, Vol. 4, No. 2 (Spring 1973), 2.
6. John Povey, “Dennis Brutus: Poetry and Politics,” Ba Shiru, Vol. 4, No. 2 (Spring 1973), 15.
7. William Wordsworth, The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Fifth Edition, Vol. 2, edited by M.H. Abrams (New York: W.W. Norton, 1986), p. 162.
8. Dennis Brutus, “Poetry of Suffering: The Black Experience,” Ba Shiru, Vol. 4, No. 2 (Spring 1973), 8.
9. Dennis Brutus, Ba Shiru, Vol. 4, No. 2 (Spring 1973), 11-15.
10. Dennis Brutus, Ba Shiru, Vol. 4, No. 2 (Spring 1973), 12-13.
Works Cited
Adeleke, Dapo. Mandela. Lagos
Brutus, Dennis. “Poetry of Suffering: The Black Experience.” Ba Shiru, 1973.
Brutus, Dennis. “Protest Against Apartheid.” Protest and Conflict in African Literature, London and Ibadan
Egudu, R.N. Modern African Poetry and the African Predicament. London
Povey, John. “Dennis Brutus: Poetry and Politics.” Ba Shiru, 1973.
Rodney, Walter. How Europe Underdeveloped Africa . Abuja
Wordsworth, William. The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Fifth Edition, Vol. 2, New York
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