Breyten Breytenbach

Breyten Breytenbach, born in Bonnievale, South Africa on 16 September 1939 and dying on 24 November 2024, was a writer, poet, and painter. He gained global recognition as a dissident poet and outspoken opponent of apartheid, as well as for being imprisoned by the National Party government. He was a founding member of the Sestigers, a rebellious literary group, and is considered a major figure in Afrikaans poetry.

He attended Hoërskool Hugenote in Wellington for secondary school, then studied fine arts at the Michaelis School of Fine Art and philology at the University of Cape Town. In the early 1960s, he became a political dissenter against the National Party's apartheid policies. He helped found the Sestigers in 1961 and joined protests against the exclusion of Black youth from education.

After leaving South Africa for Europe and London, he married Yolande, a French woman of Vietnamese ancestry, in Paris. Because of the Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act and Immorality Act, this marriage prevented his return. In 1973, a special visa allowed the couple to travel to South Africa for a writers' congress at the University of Cape Town. Throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s, he was active in the anti-apartheid movement and joined the international group Okhela, speaking out at writers' forums and UN conferences.

In 1975, he entered South Africa on a false passport to help organize trade unions for Black Africans and recruit Okhela members. He was arrested and, at the Supreme Court in Pretoria, pleaded guilty to entering the country to establish a branch of Okhela, intended as a white branch of the African National Congress. Sentenced to nine years for high treason, he spent the first two in solitary confinement. In June 1977, he faced new, unusual charges—including plotting a Soviet Navy submarine attack on Robben Island—but was found guilty only of smuggling letters and poems out of prison, fined $50. Prison officials verbally abused him, censored letters from his mother, and denied him privacy to mourn her death. While incarcerated, he wrote *Mouroir: Mirror Notes of a Novel* (published 1983) and later *The True Confessions of an Albino Terrorist* (1984), which plays with unstable identities.

Released in December 1982 after seven years, due to international protests and intervention by French President François Mitterrand, he returned to Paris, obtained French citizenship, and lived there for the rest of his life. He visited the "new South Africa" in December 1993 and continued traveling there regularly, as well as to the United States and Europe. He remained a critical observer of South African politics, becoming a vocal critic of Nelson Mandela's government and calling the ANC a "corrupt organisation." After apartheid ended in 1994, he became a visiting professor at the University of Cape Town's Graduate School of Humanities in January 2000.

He was a founding member and executive director of the Gorée Institute in Dakar, Senegal, which emerged from the 1987 Dakar Conference between exiled ANC leaders and liberal South Africans, mostly Afrikaners. This meeting, attended by his friend Frederik van Zyl Slabbert, helped pave the way for a negotiated end to apartheid. He also taught classes at the institute and campaigned against other global injustices, including writing an open letter in *The Guardian* to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in 2002, accusing Israel of crimes against Palestinians.

Breytenbach wrote poetry, novels, plays, and essays, mostly in Afrikaans, with many works translated into multiple languages. His first published work, *Die Ysterkoei Moet Sweet* (1964), was considered groundbreaking for its powerful, startling ideas and departure from traditional rhythmic metres. While in Paris, he wrote about his immigrant experience. His 1972 book *Skryt. Om 'n sinkende skip blou te verf*, dedicated to South Africans denied citizenship in their own country, was banned in South Africa. During his imprisonment, he wrote five volumes of poetry.