Ten O'Clock News

[Brutus] That all right? [reciting] The sounds begin again. The siren in the night. The thunder at the door. The shriek of nerves in pain. Then the keening crescendo of faces split by pain. The wordless, endless, wail. Only the unfree know. Importunate as rain, the wraiths exhaled their woe over the sirens, knuckles, boots. Mice sounds begin again. [Interviewer] People of course see you and hear you as a poet. They also know you have been a prisoner and an activist in South Africa and sometimes you're also an embodiment of political movement in this country. How do all those roles

work, how do you see yourself? [Brutus] Well I don't find any difficulty in dealing with these different roles. I don't see them as compartments of my life. I think at the center is a single person who is concerned about human rights and justice in America, in Africa and elsewhere. But of course there is the constant element of the sense of exile of struggling to change for return. [Interviewer] You've written about that. [Brutus] That's right. And I'd like to read something that deals with that. [reading] Each day, each hour is not painful. Exile is not amputation. There is no bleeding wound,

no torn flesh and severed nerves. The secret is clamping down, holding the lid of awareness tight shut, sealing in the acrid searing stench that scalds the eyes, swallows up the breath, and fixes the brain in a wail until some thoughtless questioner pries it loose. I can exclude awareness of exile until someone calls me one. The agony returns. After a crisis, delirium, surcease, an aftermath. My heart knows an exhausted calm,

catharsis brings forgetfulness, but with recovery and resilience, the agony returns. I have been bedded in London, and Paris, Amsterdam, and Rotterdam. In Munich and Frankfurt, in Warsaw and Rome, and still my heart cries out for home. Exile is the reproach of beauty in a foreign landscape. Vaguely familiar because it echoes a remembered beauty. [Interviewer] How do you describe South Africa to people who haven't been there

and who don't know it? [Brutus] I think if you don't have a great deal of time you have to seize on certain high points, things that represent the essence of the society, the nature of the society. And there's certain events that represent I think what South Africa is about better than others. I think of 1976 and the massacre of almost a thousand students shot down by the police. Soweto, ghetto outside Johannesburg. And I think of Sharpeville in March of 1960 when men, women, and children were shot down running, shot in the back, most of them. And Sharpeville seems to me a kind of watershed point in South African history, the commitment of a minority to kill if necessary in order to remain in power. And I wrote something about

Sharpeville. [reading] What is important about Sharpeville is not that 70 died, nor even that they were shot in the back retreating unarmed, defenseless. And certainly not the heavy caliber slug that tore through a mother's back and ripped into the child in her arms, killing it. Remember Sharpeville, bullet in the back day, because it epitomized oppression and the nature of the society more clearly than anything else. It was the classic event. What the world whispers, apartheid declares with snarling

guns. The blood of the rich lust after South Africa spills in the dust. Remember Sharpeville. Bullet in the back day. And remember the unquenchable will to free them. Remember the dead and be glad. [Interviewer] What is going on in South Africa now, do you think, what are the important trends? [Brutus] It seems to me things are getting steadily and predictably worse. That the repression increases, the number of people in the jails has grown, the number of people who are executed by the

apartheid system, this has also increased. And of course the resistance to the people-- of the people to the oppression has increased. And quite recently the South Pretoria government executed people who had opposed the apartheid system, and I think particularly of a young man Solomon Mahlangu who was hanged in Pretoria by the government and for whom I wrote a piece of poetry as a tribute to him. And I'd like to read some of that. [reading] Singing, he went to war, and singing he went to his death. There was sunlit ?Gott? Street and the clear, pale blue sunlight of the high veldt, and the sun and the

bustle Edgar's Store and the goodly things money might buy for the rich and the white. And the sharp crack of gunfire and screams of pain and barked commands and the thud of falling bodies. Afterwards there was the long gray corridor and the rattling salute on metal bars, the stark shape of the gallows, the defiant shouts of "Amandla". Singing, he went to war, and singing he went to his death. On the road to the airport I search the news till I find the dreaded item. He was hanged at dawn. All

night his name, his face, his body, his fate, the cell, the gallows, pressed on my awareness like a nail hammered into my brain. Solomon Mahlangu, till dawn, till the time, till the news, the newspaper report. He had been hanged. Then the nail was pulled from my brain. And the drip of tears inside my skull began. Singing, he went to war, and singing he went to his death. [Interviewer] I think that's

terrific. [Brutus] You may still want to edit a bit in the places where I fumbled a bit or something. [Interviewer] No, you didn't fumble at all, the only thing-- we may condense it a little bit and the pauses. But and above, you want me talking and him listening? Okay, just for editing purposes. I think that was wonderful. Will you read some of those, all of those? [Brutus] Some of those. [Interviewer] And other things too. [Brutus] I've talked to Pete last night. It was a day when I was summoned to appear before

the (inaudible). [Interviewer] Yes. Now you want me listening, Bob. [background noises] Yeah. I don't know him. And I don't

think we carry his program, what does he do? [Brutus] Well a kind of book show, he's kind of like Studs Terkel. As they come into town, a 30 minute segment, reading discussion. [Interviewer] Okay. [shuffling paper] People see you and of course hear you as a poet. I think they also know of course, I'm sorry, let's start this again. People hear you as a poet. They also know you've been an activist and a prisoner in South Africa,

you're also in some sense an embodiment of political movement in this country. Among those roles, how do you see yourself? How do you describe South Africa to people who haven't been there and who don't know it? What is going on in South Africa today? What are the important movements? Ok, Bob. That-- and if we could get a maybe a two-shot from over there. What do you think? Yeah. A wide shot is what I meant, sorry.