Brutus gives view on congress

Press, 20 August 1983, Page 26

Brutus gives view on congress

NZPA Washington The international congress of journalists organ.ised by the South African Rugby Board president, Mr Danie Craven, for Cape Town next week is a backdoor attempt to persuade the world to readmit South Africa to the Olympic Games, says the exiled South African poet, Dennis Brutus. Mr Brutus, jailed in South Africa as a subversive in the 19605, has been teaching African literature at the Northwestern University, Illinois, for the last 13 years, campaigning all that time on behalf of South Africa’s non-white population and against apartheid.

Now he is fighting a court battle with the Immigration and Naturalisation Service to remain in the United States — a fight backed by senators and congressmen who have introduced bills to allow him to stay. Mr Brutus, aged 58, is one of English-speaking Africa’s best known poets, a quiet man with sharp views. A Coloured (mixed race), he was born in Zimbabwe (then southern Rhodesia) but grew up in South Africa. He says that he was tortured there and shot three times at close range while trying to escape. He tried to commit suicide in prison on Robben Island, slashing his wrists with a sharp stone. After his release, and a year of house arrest, he signed a exit form recognising that he would be imprisoned if he returned.

He visited New Zealand twice in the early 1970 s to protest against rugby contacts with South Africa.

He is credited with a substantial voice in the efforts that have resulted in South Africa being barred from most international sporting competition. He said from his home in Evanston, Illinois, that he

anticipated South Africa would apply at Los Angeles next year for readmission to the Olympics. “I also anticipate that New Zealand will vote in favour of it,” he said. “The New Zealand Olympic Committee has been, regrettably, one of the biggest supporters of racism in the world. “Although on the one hand we hear protestations

both by the Government and the Olympic Committee that they are opposed to racism, their actions belie what they say.” Mr Brutus said Mr Craven’s congress was “a public relations exercise” to win the journalists over and persuade them that apartheid had been removed from sport in South Africa. “If these journalists are persuaded of this, they may

begin to write in favour of South Africa’s re-entry to the Olympics,” he said. The United States would probably propose South Africa’s readmission “since we now have the Reagan Government following what they call ‘a policy of constructive engagement.’ So I think this congress ought to be watched fairly carefully.” The non-racial sporting

bodies are holding a competing conference in Cape Town on Saturday and Sunday, he said. . Mr Craven’s congress is on Monday and Tuesday. The (non-racial) South African Council on Sport said tha't this meeting was expected to be the largest sporting conference held in South Africa, he said. Mr Brutus quoted from a letter from the council, which discussed Mr Craven’s congress.

It reads: “No doubt the aim of this conference will be to attempt to mislead the world into believing that South African sport in general and South African rugby in particular are completely free of any racial restrictions. “As black South Africans, we state quite categorically that rugby and all sport is conducted on racial lines.

“Sport in South Africa is riddled with racism all along the line and is deliberately administered in a manner so as to favour heavily the white sportsmen of this country.”

Mr Brutus said that his experience of New Zealand has been that sports administrators had written apologia for apartheid and then gone off and “had a great time” in South Africa. “After Gleneagles (the 1977 Commonwealth document opposing sporting contacts with South Africa) I think there was a slightly improvement, but New Zealand is still one of the biggest culprits, I’m sorry to say, of supporting racism.”

Mr Brutus’s fight with the Immigration and Naturalisation Service came because his British passport became invalid after Zimbabwe’s independence, and processing of his Zimbabwean passport was too slow to allow him to renew his temporary visa, one usually granted to distinguished foreign scholars for a limited time. The service then decided that as he had been granted tenure at Northwestern (a rare honour for someone without a doctorate) he was a permanent resident and not entitled to the temporary visa anyway. The judge will have to rule according to immigration laws (the. next hearing is on September 6), but the eventual decision could well be a political one, and the issue is seen as a test of the Reagan Administration’s policy on South Africa. Mr Brutus says that if he returned to Zimbabwe, which borders South Africa, it would be relatively easy for the South African secret police to abduct him and take him back across the border.