In 1975, while his career was well underway, Breitenbach was imprisoned at the age of 36 for secret activities against the apartheid system.
South African author and poet Breyten Breitenbach died in Paris over the weekend, his family has confirmed.
“He passed away peacefully in Paris, France, at the age of 85, surrounded by his wife Yolande,” Breytenbach's family confirmed in a statement.
A statement from his family described him as a prominent South African wordsmith whose work had “deeply influenced literature and art at home and abroad”.
Interested in art and poetry since the age of 15, she was impressed by the reputation of the University of Cape Town's Fine Arts Department and enrolled at the English-language university.
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Anti-Apartheid Afrikaners
In 1983, Breitenbach gave a candid interview. new york times He tells of his struggle with the apartheid government that ultimately forced him to flee his birthplace and move to Paris.
He said he would never reject Afrikaans not as a language but as part of the “Afrikaans political identity”.
“I no longer consider myself an Afrikaner. In fact, I like to consider myself a citizen of the world. I feel at home here in Paris. I am a Parisian. ! But Afrikaans. I have long felt that there is only hope if it is used in resistance to apartheid, but now I think it is too late, it is a denial of reality and humiliation. is.”
Breitenbach 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 criticizing the racist apartheid regime.
At the age of 20, he left school and headed to Europe, working as a porter at London's Euston station and then working in various jobs on the continent.
Breitenbach settled in Paris in 1962, where he painted, wrote, taught English, and became fluent in French. It was around this time that he met his wife Yolande Ngo Thi Hoang Lien, who was from Vietnam.
The author published his first collection of poems in 1964 and has published similar works since then.
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life as a prisoner
In 1975, at the age of 36, while his career was well underway, Breitenbach was imprisoned for secret activities against the apartheid system.
In the same year, he was arrested while visiting South Africa using a French passport under the false name “Christian Galaska”.
He was sentenced to nine years in prison for entering the country with intent. The court took the view that the trade union movement against apartheid was a threat to national security.
He served the first two years of a seven-year sentence in a small cell.
The author was released in December 1982 along with 27 other political prisoners, making Breitenbach the first white man to be released before the end of his sentence in 30 years. His sentence was reduced from nine years to seven years.
Speaking to the New York Times after his release from prison, he said his commitment to the strict regime remained unchanged.
“I am even more repulsed than before by what is happening in South Africa because I have experienced all the horrors of hanging and the racism even on death row,” he said.
“My understanding of the system has deepened and I have come to see the perpetrators as human beings, prisoners of their own reactions. My basic response to apartheid is the same as before, but how should I respond going forward? It's different. I'm going to follow my own path through writing.”
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