Afrikaans anti-apartheid writer and poet Breyten Breytenbach dies at 85

South African writer and poet Breyten Breytenbach died in Paris over the weekend, his family confirmed.

“He passed away peacefully in Paris (France) at the age of 85 – with his wife Yolande by his side,” Breytenbach’s family averred in a statement.

The family statement described him as a celebrated South African wordsmith whose work “profoundly shaped literature and the arts, both locally and abroad.”

Interested in art and poetry from the age of 15 and impressed by the reputation of the fine arts faculty of the University of Cape Town, he enrolled in this university.

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Anti-apartheid Afrikaner

In 1983 Breytenbach had a candid interview with the New York Times about his struggle with the apartheid government, which eventually drove him away from his country of birth to Paris.

He said he would never reject Afrikaans as a language but as part of ‘Afrikaner political identity’.

“I no longer consider myself an Afrikaner. Actually, I prefer to consider myself a citizen of the world. I feel at home here in Paris. I’m a Parisian! But Afrikaans. I’ve long felt there was hope for it only if it were used in resistance to apartheid, but I think it is now too late. For blacks, it is a denial of reality and a humiliation.”

Breytenbach attended the University of Cape Town and joined a group of Afrikaans poets and writers called the Sestigers, who wanted to highlight the beauty of the language while critiquing the racist apartheid regime.

At the age of 20, he left school and set out for Europe, working as a porter at London’s Euston station before drifting into a variety of jobs on the Continent.

Breytenbach settled in Paris in 1962, painting, writing, teaching English and becoming fluent in French. It was around this time that he met his wife Yolande Ngo Thi Hoang Lien from Vietnam.

The author published his first book of poems in 1964. He published similar work in the following years.

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Life as a prisoner

At the age of 36 in 1975 when his career was thriving, Breytenbach was jailed for clandestine activities against the apartheid system.

He was arrested that same year while visiting South Africa, using a French passport with the alias ‘Christian Galazka’.

He was sentenced to nine years in prison for the intent with which he had entered the country. The court took the view that trade union campaigns against apartheid constituted a threat to the safety of the state.

He served the first two years of his seven-year sentence in solitary confinement in a small cell.

The writer was released in December 1982 together with 27 other political prisoners, Breytenbach being the first white to be released before the full expiration of sentence in the first such commutation in 30 years. His sentence was reduced from nine years to seven years.

Speaking to the New York Times after being released from prison, he said his resolve against the draconian system remained intact.

“I’m even more revolted at what’s going on in South Africa than before, having experienced such things as the horror of all those hangings, and racial differentiation even in the condemned cells,” he said.

“My perceptions of the system have deepened, and I’m more inclined now to see the culprits also as human beings, prisoners of their own responses. My basic response to apartheid is the same as before, but my method of response will now be different. I’m going to stick to my own way, through writing.”

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