Poetic Obituaries: Dennis Brutus, the poet and anti-apartheid activist,

who has died aged 85, had no business reaching that ripe old age. In 1963, he was shot in the back at point-blank range in broad daylight by a white policeman in the streets of Johannesburg.

Brutus told me later in an interview for South Magazine that he did not realise, at first, that he had been shot. He was in the hands of the authorities after trying to flee South Africa via the Mozambique border, where he had been caught by Portuguese secret police and handed back. In Johannesburg, he saw a chance to make a run for it and took it.

from The Guardian: Dennis Brutus obituary

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