POET LAUREATE KEORAPETSE KGOSITSILE

Mandela’s Sermon

Blessed are the dehumanized

for they have nothing to lose

but their patience

False gods killed the poet in me. Now

I dig graves

with artistic precision

Keorapetse Kgositsile in olokum.zip.net

Professor Keorapetse Kgositsile courtesy University of KwaZulu-Natal

Professor Keorapetse William Kgositsile is the second National Poet Laureate in South Africa. His status as a Poet Laureate (since 8 December 2006) who received R1 million as part of the appointment sparked off a debate by politicians in 2007. It was dubbed the Clash of the Mandarins . At 70, he is a 'lecturer', writer and political activist. He taught at Universities of Dar es Salaam, Nairobi and Gaborone. During the apartheid era in South Africa, he went into exile in 1961 at 23 as a member of the African National Congress and remained in exile for 29 years. He left the US in 1975, where he was a significant Poet because he was one of those identified as an African Poet and was also a member of the Pan-African Movement. He married fellow activist Baleka Mbete in 1978. The name of the group The Last Poets was from one of Kgositsile's poems. He won awards including the Gwendolyn Brooks Award for Poetry, New York Council of the Arts, Harlem Cultural Council and Rockefeller Foundation Awards. The revolutionary poet was influenced by writers like Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, Charles Dickens and D. H. Lawrence. Letter To Poet Laureate is a poem by David wa Maahlamela for keorapetse kgositsile.