Undated picture of South African poet De [Getty Images]

Undated picture of South African poet Dennis Vincent Brutus (28 November 1924, Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe) who died in his sleep on December 26, 2009 in South Africa. Dennis Brutus was an activist against the apartheid government of South Africa in the 1960s. He worked to get South Africa suspended from the Olympics; this eventually lead to the country's expulsion from the games in 1970. He joined the Anti-Coloured Affairs Department organisation (Anti-CAD), a group that organised against the Coloured Affairs Department which was an attempt by the government to institutionalise divisions between blacks and coloureds. He was arrested in 1963 and jailed for 18 months on Robben Island. According to fellow writer Olu Oguibe, interim Director of the Institute for African American Studies at the University of Connecticut, "Brutus was arguably Africa's greatest and most influential modern poet after Leopold Sedar Senghor and Christopher Okigbo. AFP PHOTO (Photo credit should read -/AFP/Getty Images)

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