Jubilee 2000
http://www.jubilee2000uk.org
Dennis Brutus is an exiled South African poet and activist who served 18 months imprisoned on Robben Island with Nelson Mandela (1964-65). In an attempted escape attempt from the Apartheid police, Brutus was shot in the back by South Africa's secret police. Such scars keep Brutus struggling against oppression.
Active in the fight to end apartheid in South Africa, he was the prime organizer behind South Africa's exclusion from the 1972 Olympics. Brutus was exiled after his prison sentence in South Africa and has spent many years teaching and organizing in the United States. He is currently a professor at the University of Pittsburgh and continues his anti-imperialist activism.
The Jubilee 2000 movement is one of Brutus' current projects. He was named honorary co-president of the Jubilee 2000 Afrika Campaign where the movement is strongest. As a speaker, Brutus is eloquent, humorous and right on the mark. Attendance at an event with Dennis Brutus produces laughter, political awareness and an admiration for an activist who has maintained the struggle for so many years. Brutus published the following poem, in Airs and Tributes:
March 21, 1987
As the seasons turn
and Summer droops to Autumn
the dyings continue
and resistance grows:
there are still those
willing to give their lives:
Sharpeville, Langa
you are sacred names:
in the center of our brains
the flame of desire for freedom
fiercely burns