Breyten Breytenbach

Breyten Breytenbach was born in Bonnievale, South Africa on September 16, 1939. A writer and artist, Breytenbach worked across multiple genres and media including poetry, fiction, nonfiction, painting, and theater. Breytenbach is also well-known for his work as a human rights activist, most especially his vocal opposition of apartheid in South Africa.

He began studies at the University of Cape Town in 1957. At that time, he became part of the Sestigers literary group made up of Afrikaans poets and writers attempting to maintain the beauty of the Afrikaans language while actively critiquing the Afrikaner government that maintained apartheid in South Africa. In a 1983 interview with The New York Times, Breytenbach said, “I'd never reject Afrikaans as a language, but I reject it as part of the Afrikaner political identity. I no longer consider myself an Afrikaner.” 

Breytenbach wrote in both Afrikaans and English.His first book was a poetry collection, Die ysterkoei moet sweet (approximately translated as “The iron cow must sweat”), which was published in 1964. Breytenbach published dozens of other poetry collections including In Africa Even the Flies are Happy: Selected Poems, 1964–1977 (Calder), Judas Eye (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1988), Windcatcher: New and Selected Poems, 1964–2006 (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2007), Lady One: Of Love and Other Poems (Harcourt, 2002), Die ongedanste dans: Gevangenisgedigte 1975 – 1983 (“The undanced dance: Prison poetry 1975–1983;” Human & Rousseau, 2005), Voice Over: A Nomadic Conversation with Mahmoud Darwish (Archipelago Books, 2009), and Katalekte (artefakte vir die stadige gebruike van doodgaan) (“Catalects (artefacts for the slow uses of dying);” Human & Rousseau, 2012).

In 1960, Breytenbach left South Africa, choosing self-imposed exile to enable his continued critique of the apartheid regime. Moving around Europe, Breytenbach eventually settled in France, where he met his wife Yolande Ngo Thi Hoang Lien. When Breytenbach and his wife attempted to return to South Africa in the sixties, they were denied entry because Breytenbach’s wife was Vietnamese and interracial marriage was illegal in South Africa at the time.

After achieving wide literary success, Breytenbach successfully returned to South Africa in 1975 using a false name and passport. He was ultimately arrested under the South African Terrorism Act of 1967 and accused of attempting to support the creation of a branch of the anti-apartheid group Okhela as part of Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress party. After his conviction for terrorism, Breytenbach was sentenced to seven years in prison, the first two of which were spent in solitary confinement. Despite the difficulties of his situation, Breytenbach continued to write poetry while in prison.

In 1982, after seven years in prison, Breytenbach was released thanks to French President, François Mitterrand, after which Breytenbach became a French citizen and resided in Paris.

Breytenbach’s years in prison yielded a great deal of writing, including one of his best-known works, The True Confessions of an Albino Terrorist (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1983). The True Confessions of an Albino Terrorist is part of a four-volume, nonfiction work about Breytenbach’s relationship with South Africa which also includes A Season in Paradise (Persea Books, 1980), Return to Paradise (Harcourt, 1993), and Dog Heart: A Memoir (Harcourt, 1999). 

Breytenbach was honored with numerous awards including five Central News Agency Awards, an Alan Paton Award for Literature, an Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, a Mahmoud Darwish Award for Creativity, and a Jan Campert Award. He also won several prizes including a Rapport Prize, a Hertzog Prize, a Reina Prinsen Geerligs Prize, a Van der Hoogt Prize, and a Jacobus van Looy Prize for Literature and Art.

Breytenbach taught at the University of Natal, Princeton, the University of Cape Town, and in the Graduate Program in Creative Writing at NYU.