The necessary struggle
PARKTOWN – Professor Patrick FitzGerald celebrates the launch of his book, Epitaphs and dreams: Poems to remember the struggle.
He sat there, in his black leather jacket, a beret swooped to the right of his head and a hard to miss red scarf around his neck.
To the unobservant eye, Professor Patrick FitzGerald, is like any other superbly-dressed man in society. To his peers he is an academic, to his comrades he is an anti-apartheid activist.
Prof FitzGerald recently celebrated the launch of his poetry book called, Epitaphs and dreams: Poems to remember the struggle
The book is a series of poems that reflect his experiences during the struggle – love, hopelessness, anger and the hope for change.
Currently a director of executive education at the Wits School of Governance, he has experienced the country at its worst and best of times.
He explained how people are always baffled that he would write struggle poems in 2016. “The bulk of my poetry was written at the height of the struggle,” explained Prof FitzGerald.
He spent 13 years in exile, those years were spent travelling between Botswana, Zambia and the United Kingdom.
Prof FitzGerald recalled how he would spend his days in exile with a weapon in one hand a pen in another. “I could take a gun apart blindfolded and I could also write about life at height of the struggle.”
The grandson of pioneering trade unionist Mary FitzGerald, after whom a square in Newtown is named, Prof FitzGerald said that poetry at that time, was an important component to his keeping the faith during the resistance, alive.
His book is available at Love Books and other book shops in Johannesburg.
