Caught on Tape: Dennis Brutus's Questionable Hold on Poet Arthur Nortje

The publication in 2011 of The Dennis Brutus Tapes, edited by Bernth Lindfors from recordings made as early as during the mid-1970s when the South African exile was resident in Austin, Texas, provides a revealing opportunity to comment on the adaptations and evasions the poet and activist made to his life-story subsequently. The focus here is on stressing how Brutus mythologises the reputation of his pupil and fellow poet Arthur Nortje (born 1942), after the latter's suicide in 1970, prejudiced the editing of his works, and held some of Nortje's achievements to be his own.