Protest and prison narratives in the poetry of Dennis Brutus

Abstract

Dennis Brutus, one of South Africa’s most renown anti-apartheid activists, is one of many African poets who use their poetry to protest against, and  resist, repressive governments often leading to run-ins with security agencies and sometimes incarceration. Brutus’s prison experiences form an  important backdrop to his oeuvre overall and especially his work of protest and political activism. The poems and narratives under focus document  his horrifying personal encounters and stories shared with him by other prisoners as well as their coping strategies and modes of solidarity. We  explore some of these poems for the ways in which they represent an extremely valuable contribution to the emerging sub-genre of (South) African  prison/protest literature on the one hand. On the other hand, the poems foreground the continued importance of literary representations of protest  and resistance to the growing cultural archives of hitherto hidden accounts of the struggle against colonialism in general and apartheid in  particular. It also highlights the role of such narratives in contemporary African societies where independence has unfortunately not yet brought an  end to repressive rule.