Breyten Breytenbach (Afrikaans pronunciation: [ˈbrəitən ˈbrəitənbaχ]; 16 September 1939 – 24 November 2024) was a South African writer, poet, and painter.

He was a founding member of the Sestigers, a dissident literary movement of Afrikaner writers,[3] in 1961, and participated in protests against the exclusion of black youth from educational pathways.

[1] However, in 1973, a special visa was granted to the couple to allow them to travel to South Africa for a writers' congress at the University of Cape Town.

[6] Breytenbach was involved in the anti-apartheid movement throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s, and joined the international organisation Okhela (meaning "spark").

[4] After travelling to South Africa in 1975 on a false passport with the intention of helping black Africans organise trade unions, and to recruit members of Okhela,[4] he was arrested.

[4] According to André Brink, Breytenbach was retried in June 1977 on new and fanciful charges that, among other things, he had planned a submarine attack by the Soviet Navy on the Robben Island prison through the Okhela.

[5] After free elections toppled the ruling National Party and ended apartheid in 1994, Breytenbach became a visiting professor at the University of Cape Town in the Graduate School of Humanities in January 2000.

This arose from an historic meeting in 1987 that became known as the Dakar Conference, between exiled leaders of the ANC and a group of liberal South Africans, mostly Afrikaners, from all walks of life.

It was regarded as groundbreaking in Afrikaans poetry, presenting "powerful and startling ideas ... without the use of traditional rhythmic metres and attractive images".

Painting Blue a Sinking Ship), published in the Netherlands in 1972, was dedicated "to the people of South Africa, denied citizenship in their own country".

Inspired by François Villon's 15th-century "Ballade des Dames du Temps Jadis", Breytenbach compared Afrikaner dissidents Peter Blum, Ingrid Jonker, and himself to unfaithful lovers, who had betrayed Afrikaans poetry by taking leave of it.

[17] In January 2000, Breytenbach started a three-year stint as visiting professor in the departments of English and Drama in the Graduate School of Humanities at the University of Cape Town.

[4] In 1962, Breytenbach met and married the daughter of the South Vietnamese ambassador to France, Yolande Ngo Thi Hoang Lien.

[22][23] Cloete was notably one of the few people given permission by South African Prime Minister John Vorster to take photographs of Nelson Mandela at Robben Island following his imprisonment there in July 1964.

[39] His works have been translated into many languages, including English, Dutch, German, French, Arabic, Polish, Danish, Basque, Swedish, Portuguese, Spanish, and Italian.