Landmark Case Returns to NY Seeking Millions From Corporations That Profited From South African Apartheid

The case was initially dismissed in November 2004, but reinstated last October. The Supreme Court was set to rule on the case in May, but sent it back to district court after four justices disclosed they owned shares in some of the companies named in the suit.
District Court Judge John Sprizzo will preside over the hearings. He made the initially ruling to dismiss the case nearly four years ago.

My next guest is one of the South African apartheid victims who have come to New York to testify. In apartheid South Africa of the 1960s, the poet Dennis Brutus was an outspoken activist against the racist state. He helped secure South Africa’s suspension from the Olympics, eventually forcing the country to be expelled from the games in 1970. He was arrested in 1963 and sentenced to 18 months of hard labor on Robben Island off Capetown, with Nelson Mandela. Brutus was banned from teaching, writing, and publishing in South Africa. His first collection of poetry, “Sirens, Knuckles and Boots” was published in Nigeria while he was in prison. After he was released, Brutus fled South Africa on a Rhodesian passport. In 1983, after a protracted legal struggle, Brutus won the right to stay in the United States as a political refugee. He has since become Professor Emeritus in the Department of Africana Studies at the University of Pittsburgh and professor at South Africa’s University of KwaZulu-Natal. Dennis Brutus will celebrate his eighty-fourth birthday later this year. He joins me now in the firehouse studio.

Dennis Brutus, South African poet and activist.