Items

• The Times Diary: Poetic Justice

  [Full text]: "The prosaic difficulties of a troubled world have complicated work on an international reference book on poets who write in English. With a preface by the Poet Laureate, C. Day Lewis, Contemporary Poets of the English Language is the first book on the subject for more than 10 years and the only one to include non-white poets from Asia and Africa: it will be published in October by The St. James Press of Chicago and London. Its American editor-in-chief, Mrs. Rosalie Murphy, says she ran into many problems. In Nigeria, the questionnaire sent to Wole Soyinka was not passed on to him in prison, where he has been for two years; while the entry on Christopher Okigbo had to be dropped after Mrs. Murphy had confirmed a report that he had been killed in the civil war. Then there were many black South African poets who have escaped from or otherwise left the country and still move from place to place: Bloke Modisane, believed to have left South Africa on foot in 1950, was traced to London. Minor racial complications occurred in this country, too. Most poets from Wales put down "Welsh" as their nationality, although some admitted to "Anglo-Welsh." Most Scots preferred "British," while some northern Irish put "British-Irish." In America, nearly all Negroes called themselves "Black," although LeRoi Jones added exotically "African-American-Ancient Egyptian."
• The Times Diary: Envoy steps into gap

  "The Malagasy Republic's ambassador in London, Mr. Jules Razafimbahiny, 46, is being called back to help fill the gap caused by the death of the Malagasy Foreign Minister, Dr. Albert Sylla, in an air crash in Madagascar last month. Mr. Razafimbahiny is to become Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, the senior position going to the Minister of Agriculture, Mr. Jacques Rabemananjara, who is also a poet of note and was imprisoned by the French in France following the insurrection of 1947...
• South African poet faces the death penalty

  Breyten Breytenbach, the anti-apartheid poet, was sent for trial in the Supreme Court today on charges carrying the death penalty. Mr Breytenbach, aged 36, is accused under the Terrorism and Anti-Communism Acts of helping to set up an illegal organization to promote armed struggle in South Africa intended to overthrow the white government... Mr Breytenbach is said to have been involved not only during his latest visit, but during a well-publicized visit in 1973, when he brought his wife. They are not allowed to live together under South African's racial laws.
• Progress in Nigeria since civil war

  A 10-page Special Report on Nigeria will appear in The Times on Monday. Less than three years since the Biafran secession move collapsed the Nigerian civil war has been largely forgotten. Wole Soyinka, Africa's leading playwright, for whom it remains a vivid memory and who was imprisoned for nearly two years in solitary confinement, talks in the report revealingly about his country and his own future. Peter Hopkirk reports on the mood today among former Biafrans, and Cyprian Ekwensi, the novelist, writes on Africa's "rediscovery" of its cultural heritage.
• Power of the Pen in Exile: The Times Profile, Breyten Breytenbach

  This profile of Breyten Breytenbach describes his arrest in South Africa, his subsequent release, and his feelings about the South African regime and Afrikaans as a language more generally. "It was at the age of 36, the height of his literary acclaim, that South Africa's leading Afrikaans poet Breyten Breytenbach was imprisoned for seven years for clandestine activities against the apartheid system."
• Poet tells court of 'walled pit' in prison

  Breyten Breytenbach, the award-winning Afrikaans poet, described today how he began to "doubt my sanity" in the total isolation of the "walled pit" of his maximum security cell in Pretoria Central Prison. He was giving evidence for the second day running at the Pretoria Palace of Justice where he is on trial under the Terrorism Act and 17 other charges under the Riotous Assemblies and Prisons Acts. ...He is alleged to have tried to bribe a warden to let him escape. Mr Breytenbach was arrested early in 1975 after he had returned to South Africa after years of self-imposed exile in Paris to organize white activists into bringing about radical change in South Africa.
• Poet fights apartheid with his pen

  Mr Breyten Breytenbach, the Afrikaans poet, who arrived here on Sunday after being unexpectedly freed from prison in South Africa, said yesterday that he would not continue his political fight against apartheid. "I realize that I am not a politician," he said in an television interview. "But my whole life is against this type of situation, this type of ideology, in my private and professional life, as a poet and painter." Asking if he would continue his struggle through his poems and paintings, Mr Breytenbach said: "Yes, that will be my way." Mr Breytenbach, aged 44, was released on Thursday after serving seven years of a nine-year sentence on charges of plotting to overthrow the South African Government. At his trial he had admitted actively supporting the banned African National Congress. Looking fit and well, Mr Breytenbach said that he had seven years of poetry written in prison which he hoped to prepare for publication.
• Playwright's denial on Biafra

  Nigeria's leading playwright, Wole Soyinka, aged 33, has smuggled a letter out of his prison cell here, denying emphatically that he confessed to aiding the secessionist regime of the former Eastern Region. In a 202-word note written on a small piece of paper, Mr. Soyinka, who has been in custody since August 17, accused the Government of seeking to discredt him and his efforts to bring about a cease-fire in the civil war. Chief Anthony Enahoro, Federal Commissioner for Information, told journalists here on October 28 that Mr. Soyinka had admitted agreeing to spy for the Biafrans, to help them buy arms and to work "for the overthrow of the Federal Government." The commissioner said the playwright confessed to meeting Biafran leaders in their acpital at Enugu on August 6, and in the Mid-West capital of Benin three days later when it was seized by rebel forces under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Victor Banjo....
• Outspoken Man of Letters

  ...Poet, dramatist, novelist, and journalist [Soyinka] personifies Nigeria's fascination with politics and the population's irrepressible urge to speak out on any and every issue... Mr. Soyinka's frankness - some would say arrogance - has landed him in trouble in the past and he was detained by the federal government for two years in 1967 when he tried his hand at resolving civil war and visited secessionist Biafra... Nigeria's Nobel prize winner, one of his compatriots told me, is part of a group of people who act as the conscience of the nation...
• Obituary

  "Ghanian poet and novelist and diplomat killed in the Nairobi terrorist attack."
• No lies, no half-truths: a writer's cup of bitterness runs over

  The article writes on Wole Soyinka's new book, A Man Died, which was "based on his experiences in and out of prison during the civil war [in Nigeria], and which seems certain to cause General Gowon's Government grave embarassment."
• News in Brief: Nigerian freed

  Mr. Wole Soyinka, the Nigerian playwright, has been released from prison. A police source in Lagos disclosed that Mr. Soyinka was among 151 civilian detainees freed since October 1 under a limited amnesty.
• Mr Hain aims for Springboks' Achilles heel

  [Excerpt]: "SUPPORT has snowballed beyond our wildest dreams,' says Peter hain, 19-year-old chairman of the Stop the Seventy Tour Committee formed recently to co-ordinate opposition, to next year's visit to Britain of the South African cricket team but now in the thick of the furore over the current Springbok rugger tour... It was through Denis Brutus, black South African president of SANROC (the South African Non-Racial Olympic Committee) that Hain met 22-year old Hugh Geach, a Reading University student in Soil Science who is now honorary secretary of STST. Brutus is one of the few activists now hounding the Springboks with first-hand knowledge of het grim realities of Apartheid..."
• Letters to the editor: Nigerian author

  From Mr. Ronald Bryden and others... Sir,-- It has been reported that Wole Soyinka, Nigeria's leading poet and playwright, has been imprisoned for signing a letter to a Nigerian newspaper proposing a truce in the present hostilities. We, the undersigned, are deeply concerned over Mr. Soyinka's predicament. To imprison him merely for suggesting a way out of the present unhappy situation can only do harm to Nigeria both at home and abroad. We therefore appeal to those with the power to do so to release him. Yours faithfully, Ronald Bryden, Andre Deutsch, Dennis Duerden, William Gaskill, Dan Jacobson, Joan Littlewood, Roland Penrose, Kenneth Tynan
• Leading source for Negro art

  [Excerpt]: "In 1974 Nigeria is to stage the second World Festival of Negro Arts. Announcing this officially in Lagos recently, Chief Enahoro, Federal Commissioner of Information and Labour, who is also to be the Comissioners for the festival said it would be 'the greatest concourse of black peoples from different continents and countries in the entire history of the blakc man.' ... Nigeria's literary talents have achieved a much greater pre-eminence, and are now widely appreciated, both inside and outside Africa. Two authors in particular, Soyinka and Achebe, have received special acclaim, and both were deeply disturbed by the recent conflict and became politically involved..."
• Jailed writer offered to work for police

  Breyten Breytenbach, the jailed Afrikaans writer, offered to infiltrate the South African Communist Party in exchange for his early release from prison, according to a letter produced during his trial... Mr. Breytenbach, already serving a nine-year prison sentence, is facing 17 charges under the Terrorism, Riotous Assemblies and Prisons Acts. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges.
• Jailed poet wins South African literary award

  Breyten Breytenbach, the jailed South African writer, has won a literary prize awarded by the pro-government press, for a book of poems written in prison. Mr Breytenbach was sentenced in 1975 to nine years' imprisonment for alleged subversion on behalf of the banned African National Congress. The prize was awarded by the Perskor group which owns Die Transvaler and other Afrikaans newspapers. It is for a collection of poems entitled Voetskrif (Footnote). The prize money of 2,000 rand has been handed over to the poet's brother.
• Ghana military grant pardon to jailed poet

  [Full Text] Ghana's ruling Supreme Military Council has granted a pardon to Dr. Kofi Awoonor, the Ghanaian poet and university lecturer, who was sent to prison for a year last Wednesday, the Ghana News Agency reported. He had been convicted of aiding the escape of Brigadier Alphonse Kattah, who is alleged to have instigated an abortive coup last year. Dr. Awoonor who was arrested last December, denied the charge. An official statement said that Dr. Awoonor was expected to return to the Cape Coast university in the next two weeks.
• Clash of values

  This was a sad evening. Outside the Mercury there were a few damp demonstrators with "Free Soyinka" banners: inside, an almost equally small audience turned up for the excruciating British premiere, by the Harmony Cultural Theatre Group, of a piece in which he almost seems to have inscribed his own fat--that of a pilgrim intellectual who returns to expose himself to tribal savagery...
• Among the Magazines: Index

  "Other articles in the June issue, which is devoted to Africa and Argentina, include... 'Sculptor in prison', an interview with Pitika Ntuli, the black South African poet and artist, who describes how he coped with the ordeal of solitary confinement in Swaziland.
• Afrikaans poet released

  Mr Breyten Breytenbach, South Africa's most famous living Afrikaans poet, has been released from prison after serving seven of the nine years to which he was sentenced in 1975 for promoting the aims of the banned African National Congress (ANC). By far the best known white political prisoner in South Africa, Mr Breytenbach is also the first prisoner of note to be freed under a new policy announced earlier this year by Mr Kobie Coetsee, the Minister of Justice, which makes it possible for those convicted of "offenses against the security of the state" to qualify for remission of sentence. [Article continues to describe how political prisoners are chosen for release.]
• 18-Month Sentence on Brutus

  [Full Text]: "Denis Vincent Brutus, president of the South African Non-Racial Olympic Committee, was sentenced to 18 months imprisonment today by a Johannesburg magistrate on four charges of contravening a banning order and one of escaping from custody. Brutus was the centre of a diplomatic incident last September after he was shot down in a busy Johannesburg street by a police warrant officer as he made a dash for freedom. Brutus was banned and confined to the magisterial area of Johannesburg last year after his return from Europe where he had made representations about discrimination in Olympic teams. He broke his ban and went to Swaziland from where he intended to return to Europe to approach Olympic headquarters in Switzerland, but after crossing the border into Mozambique he was arrested by Portuguese secret police and returned to South Africa. Brutus said at the time and repeated in court today, while pleading in mitigation of sentence, that he had had a valid Rhodesian Federation passport. During the diplomatic row at that time Pretoria submitted that Brutus was a South African citizen. The magistrate ruled that Brutus's contention that his escape bid was made to draw attention to his situation was not altogether valid, but the court would take into account that he had been wounded, which was a partial penalty for his offence.
• New drive to ease fate of apartheid prisoners

  "Dennis Brutus: a story of "pogus" experiences"
• Democracy in Africa

  "Sir,--Last Sunday you published articles on two Rhodesians but educated in the Eastern Province of South Africa, and both in the news today namely Ian Smith, rebel leader of white Rhodesia who Ronald Regge tried to analyse and assess and Denis Brutus schoolmaster/poet who until quite recently was a political prisoner on the notorious Robben Island Prison, South Africa."
• Vorster answers prison criticisms

  "The IRC inspection was made by Dr. Georg Hoffman in May 1964.