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• Sportsman and Poet

  A statement issued yesterday by Maindy Msimang, administrative officer of the African National Congress in London, said: "News of the attempted murder of Dennis Brutus by the trigger-happy South African police, who are reported to have fired two shots at him at close range, will shock millions of people in South Africa and abroad, who have known him as a former weightlifting champion but also, and more particularly, as a dauntless opponent of racial discrimination in South African sport. A gifted young poet, who recently won the Nigerian award in a competition of African poets, Dennis Brutus has been hounded and persecuted by the South African Government."
• Let's Get down to Birth

  "It is astonishing that something as momentous as the birth and early development of a human has been so sparsely written about by great writers."