Breyten Breytenbach: a masterful poet, jailed for his politics, who reimagined South Africa

Breyten Breytenbach (1939-2024) was an artist, poet, thinker and outspoken political activist who changed the literary landscape in South Africa. He died on 24 November in Paris, where he had first been exiled in the 1960s.

Exploring themes of identity, exile and justice in a career spanning almost six decades, his paintings were exhibited in major galleries and he was awarded prestigious literary prizes.

Breytenbach was a master of metaphor. Metaphors transcend the literal meanings of words, creating new associations and images that stir the reader’s imagination. But his metaphors leave all definitions and theories about metaphor short.

By joining concepts and words in curious ways his metaphors create imaginative alternatives:

die maan is ‘n silwer skree (The moon is a silver scream)

Often he would create new words and meanings in the process:

om te onthou, is om te verbeel … ek ontbeel jou. (To remember, is to imagine … I remagine you – where “ontbeel” is a new word.)

His poetry brimmed with astonishing and often baffling metaphors. But for him, metaphors were never mere literary devices or ornamental tools of poetry, paired with rhythm and incantation.

To him, metaphor was an ethical imperative. This act of sparking the moral imagination was, for Breytenbach, the essence of poetry – and indeed, of art. The ability to constantly imagine alternatives to the fixed meanings of words, to reimagine concepts like self, nation, group, identity, Afrikaans, Afrikaner, and Africa, remained the central focus of all his creative endeavours, whether in painting, poetry, or prose.

Breytenbach’s resistance to all forms of oppression and exclusion, which led to his clashes with Afrikaner nationalism and apartheid in the 1960s, and ultimately to his imprisonment, was rooted in his resistance to the power of words to fix meanings and confine possibilities.

I grew up in the confined and deeply nationalist, religious Afrikaner environment of the 1960s and 1970s. Afrikaners were settlers in South Africa who would later create apartheid under white minority rule. To me, Breytenbach offered a radically different way of being Afrikaans. His work – like that of André Brink and later Antjie Krog – inspired me to study literature. Over decades of teaching his writings, I saw first-hand how they transformed students’ perspectives on art, life, identity, justice and politics.

His words and his life were deeply intertwined. In both, he rejected rigidity. For Breytenbach, the ethical question – how to live well – and the creative act of using language were one. Through poems, essays, letters, and speeches, he unmasked and resisted language’s tendency to fixate, to solidify. In doing so, he resisted the ways in which rigid language contributes to restrictive thinking and actions.

Who was Breyten Breytenbach?

Born in Bonnievale in the Western Cape province in 1939, Breytenbach grew up in Wellington and studied fine arts at the University of Cape Town before moving to France in the early 1960s.

While he built a career as a painter in Europe, he made his debut as an Afrikaans poet in 1964 with Die ysterkoei moet sweet (The Iron Cow Must Sweat). This groundbreaking work, along with nearly all his subsequent output, profoundly shaped Afrikaans literature.

He also wrote in English and French, fearlessly addressing themes of identity and justice. In apartheid South Africa, this placed him in direct opposition to the government, Afrikaner society, and even many of his fellow Afrikaans writers.

Breytenbach was unrelenting in his critique of Afrikaner writers of the 1960s. He chastised them for being inspired by French novels and European philosophy while turning a blind eye to the oppressive conditions of the people around them and dismissing the work of Black writers whose voices were systematically silenced and banned.

In Paris, Breytenbach met his Vietnamese wife, Yolande Ngo Thi Hoang Lien, but apartheid’s racial laws denied her a visa to visit South Africa, as she was classified as “non-white”. This forced the young couple to travel to neighbouring Swaziland (today Eswatini) to meet his parents.

Prison and banning

The personal affront of apartheid’s injustices became even more real to him, spurring his decision to join Okhela, a resistance organisation opposing the apartheid regime. He returned to South Africa under a false passport to rally support for the resistance but was caught, tried for treason – a charge that carried the death penalty – and sentenced to nine years in prison in 1975.

While he penned some of Afrikaans literature’s most moving love poems, Breytenbach also authored searing critiques of the government, resulting in the banning of many of his works. His poem Brief uit die vreemde aan slagter (Letter from Abroad to the Butcher), addressed to apartheid prime minister John Vorster, was even used against him during his trial.

After his release from prison in 1982, Breytenbach lived in exile in France and the US. Themes of identity and exile remained central to his work, as he navigated the liminal space of the “middle world” – never fully arriving, never truly leaving.

Magical use of language

His exuberant language, vivid imagery, and the magical interplay of sound and rhythm continued to captivate readers. Breytenbach travelled widely, forging connections with fellow poets in exile. Notably, he translated Palestinian writer Mahmoud Darwish’s poetry into Afrikaans. Yet his unwavering commitment to justice often put him at odds with former allies, as he was unafraid to criticise those who betrayed their ideals once they wielded power.

Ultimately, Breytenbach’s resistance was rooted in a steadfast opposition to power that seeks to define, exclude, or suppress. He believed that words, with their power to shape and confine meaning, must continually be renewed, challenged, and opened to new possibilities.

For Breytenbach, the role of the artist was to nurture a creative imagination capable of imagining ethical alternatives to stagnation and dogma. This was not just an artistic philosophy; it was a way of life.

Read more: More than an oppressor's language: reclaiming the hidden history of Afrikaans

Breytenbach’s influence is profound and far-reaching. Those who have been touched by his words cannot remain unchanged. He was at once a conscience, an accuser, and an encourager – humane and gentle, reminding even the marginalised that they need not surrender to others’ definitions of them. He exhorted all to resist clichés, to reject fixed identities, and to keep reimagining the world anew.

Willie Burger does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.