He shamed the shameless

IT WAS 1976, and the Summer Olympics in Montreal had improbably become ground zero in the struggle against apartheid.

Several dozen African nations threatened to boycott if the International Olympic Committee dared to allow South Africa to be a part of the Games. Montreal's athletic jamboree was in jeopardy, and the cause of all the tumult, according to Sports Illustrated, was a diminutive South African poet who the magazine called "the Dark Genius of Dissent."

His name was Dennis Brutus. Brutus organized entire blocks of the world around a simple question: How can the Olympics say they stand for "brotherhood" and fair play if apartheid nations could join the festivities? It worked. The "Dark Genius" shamed the shameless and changed international sports forever.

Over the course of decades, as a dissident, refugee, and political prisoner, Brutus advanced this simple athletic argument. The organizations he founded, the South African Sports Association in 1958, and its successor, the South African Nonracial Olympic Committee, used it to hammer critical nails in apartheid's coffin.

For Brutus, this work in the sports world was merely an extension of a lifetime organizing for racial and economic justice. His death on December 26 after a long bout with cancer has created an incalculable void. Not merely because he was beloved as the "singing voice of the South African liberation movement"; not merely because Brutus held a reservoir of political lessons; but because he remained a tireless agitator for justice.

Days before the recent international climate talks in Copenhagen, the ailing Brutus called the proceedings a sham, saying, "We are in serious difficulty all over the planet. We are going to say to the world: There's too much of profit, too much of greed, too much of suffering by the poor...The people of the planet must be in action."

He also never stopped holding up the dreamy ideals of sport against reality's harsh light. Up until the final days of his life, while the leaders of South Africa celebrated the coming arrival of the 2010 World Cup, Brutus was in the streets, protesting the demolition of low-income housing to make way for soccer's international party. In December 2007, he publicly rejected induction in the South African Sports Hall of Fame, saying to 1,000 onlookers:

Being inducted to a sports hall of fame is an honor under most circumstances. In my case, the honor is for helping rid South African sport of racism, making it open to all. So I cannot be party to an event where unapologetic racists are also honored, or to join a hall of fame alongside those who flourished under racist sport. Their inclusion is a deception because of their unfair advantage, as so many talented Black athletes were excluded from sport opportunities.

Moreover, this hall ignores the fact that some sportspersons and administrators defended, supported and legitimized apartheid. There are indeed some famous South Africans who still belong in a sports hall of infamy. They still think they are sports heroes, without understanding and making amends for the context in which they became so heroic, namely a crime against humanity.

So, case closed. It is incompatible to have those who championed racist sport alongside its genuine victims. It's time--indeed, long past time--for sports truth, apologies and reconciliation.

I HAD the privilege of interviewing Brutus extensively three years ago about why he came to see sports as an arena to fight for justice. His answer was typical Dennis Brutus, as I came to learn: refusing to be anything less than blunt and provocative. I asked him whether he agreed with me that sports could still be a lever to change the world. Instead of cheerleading the notion, he said to me:

My own sense is that sports has less capacity now to change society then it had before. For instance, the degree that sports has become commercialized. The degree that your loyalty is no longer to a club, like it used to be, because guys are bought and sold like so many slaves...

The other thing that really scares me is the way that sport is used to divert people's attention. Critical political issues in their own lives. Their living conditions. The Romans used to say this is the way to run an empire. Give them bread, give them circuses. Now they don't even give you bread. and the circuses are lousy.

But amid his critiques, Brutus was never a pessimist, only a "critical optimist." How else to explain that in his next breath, he also said to me:

We must, however, realize that the power and reach of sports is undeniable...It's kind of a megaphone. People will hear [political athletes] because their voices are amplified. Not always in a very informed way. Of course, when there are exceptions, it can produce magic: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, for instance, or Muhammad Ali. So it does help, and they do have that megaphone. But all-important is content. All-important is politics. That is decisive."

There are ways to honor Dennis Brutus and his memory. Read aloud his poetry at the first opportunity (try Dennis' brilliant collection Poetry and Protest: A Dennis Brutus Reader). Keep his words alive to "produce magic" for a new generation. Keep fighting for global justice. And keep fighting to reclaim sports.

As people are criminalized in Vancouver to make way for the 2010 Olympics, as the poor are dispossessed in the name of the 2010 World Cup, we should proudly claim Dennis's well-worn place at the march, never allowing those in power the comfort of indifference. As Dennis said to me when I asked him how he could stay so active into his 80s: "This is no time for laurels. This is no time for rest."

First published at the Huffington Post.