Publications
Partners
For the next five weeks, we will introduce each of the finalists in the biennial City Press Tafelberg Nonfiction Award. The winner will secure a publishing contract with Tafelberg and R120 000 to take time out to write their book.
The first of our five finalists, among them Lesedi Molefi, Harry Kalmer, Nandipha Gantsho and Sara Black, is media organiser, newspaper man and academic Tyrone August.
August, who worked his way up from being a reporter, is perhaps best known as the editor of the Cape Times, but, if he lifts the prize, will be famous for his meticulous study of the first four decades in the life of sports activist and poet Dennis Brutus.
Curiously, there is no comprehensive biography of the Zimbabwean-born activist who was banned by the National Party government in 1961. Born in 1924 and graduating in English from the University of Fort Hare, Brutus entered organised politics as a young man and, through the SA Non-Racial Olympic Committee, he led a campaign against South Africa being allowed to take part in the 1964 Olympics, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Brutus’ life story tells of the politics of mixed-race Africans, the pain of imprisonment on Robben Island and the euphoria of the advent of democracy, which he witnessed before his death in 2009.
But Brutus was also one of South Africa’s master poets, and August is an equally masterful interpreter of his written works.
Read: Money, a book deal, marketing: "The award that changed my life"
“I first thought of doing research on Brutus more than 20 years ago, and even contacted him about it in 1995, when he was still based in the US,” August told City Press this week.
“He expressed an interest and we corresponded intermittently, and met when he visited Johannesburg in 1998. However, due to work and other political commitments, I was unable to devote much time then to any dedicated research.”
He is drawn to Brutus’ “lyrical use of language and the immense richness of his images”, as well as his political life. Like August, Brutus was constantly trying to find a balance between being a writer and a political organiser. August has also been a well-known figure in media unions.
A book on Brutus will restore an important history.
“I think Brutus has been marginalised mainly because he was an independent thinker; he did not uncritically support any particular individual or organisation. In exile, he parted ways with the ANC, and later became a very outspoken opponent of the post-1990 political dispensation in South Africa ... I think his poetry is also, quite wrongly, dismissed as written primarily to advance various political causes. This is a superficial, and incomplete, reading of his poetry. At its best, he writes poetry of the most exquisite lyrical beauty and intense power,” August said.
Brutus, famous for his resistance work, especially around events like the Sharpeville massacre, published the collections Salutes and Censures (1985), Stubborn Hope (1978), Letter to Martha and Other Poems from a South African Prison (1969), and Sirens, Knuckles, Boots (1963).
“In brief, I am trying to reintroduce Brutus to South Africa,” said August. “He lived in Port Elizabeth during the first half of the 20th century – a tumultuous period which saw the emergence of apartheid, a legally codified system of racial discrimination and the development of a ruthless state apparatus designed to eliminate any resistance. It was against this background that Brutus, selflessly and courageously, distinguished himself as a student, teacher, poet, journalist, sports administrator and anti-apartheid activist.”
Asked about his favourite Brutus poem, August quotes from Sleep well, my love, sleep well:
“the harbour lights glaze over restless docks,
police cars cockroach through the tunnel streets;
from the shanties creaking iron-sheets
violence like a bug-infested rag is tossed
and fear is imminent as sound in the wind-swung bell;
the long day’s anger pants from sand and rocks;
but for this breathing night at least,
my land, my love, sleep well.”
Although he has written articles that have been published in books, this will be August’s debut full-length work.
