Keorapetse William Kgositsile OIS (19 September 1938 – 3 January 2018), also known by his pen name Bra Willie, was a South African Tswana poet, journalist and political activist.

During the 1970s he was a central figure among African-American poets, encouraging interest in Africa as well as the practice of poetry as a performance art; he was well known for his readings in New York City jazz clubs.

During that time he was able (with some difficulty) to find books by Langston Hughes and Richard Wright, and was influenced by them as well as by European writers (principally Charles Dickens and D. H. Lawrence), he began writing stories, though not yet with any intention of doing so professionally.

"[7] In 1961, under considerable pressure both for himself and as part of a government effort to shut down New Age, Kgositile was urged by the African National Congress, of which he was a vocal member, to leave the country.

He graduated from Columbia in 1971, and remained in New York, teaching and giving his characteristically dynamic readings in downtown clubs and as part of the Uptown Black Arts Movement.

Jazz was crucial to Kgositsile's most influential idea: his sense of a worldwide African diaspora united by an ear for a certain quintessentially black sound.

In 1975, Kgositsile decided to return to Africa, despite his blossoming career in the United States, and took up a teaching position at the University of Dar es Salaam, in Tanzania.

He arrived in a country wholly different from the one he had left, transformed by the beginning of the end of apartheid and the release and later the political triumph of Nelson Mandela.

"[16] Kgositsile was quick to criticize black leaders as well as white for this status quo, accusing the ANC of "being criminally backward when it comes to questions of culture and its place in society or struggle.

"[17] In the early 1990s he served as vice president of COSAW, fostering the careers of young writers while continuing his steady critique of South African politics.

In January 2023, the University of Nebraska Press published the posthumous volume Keorapetse Kgositsile: Collected Poems, 1969–2018, edited and with an introduction by Phillippa Yaa de Villiers and Uhuru Portia Phalafal.

His daughter Ipeleng (from his previous marriage to the late Melba Johnson Kgositsile) is a journalist and fiction writer who has written for Vibe and Essence magazines.

In 2008, Kgositsile was awarded the national Order of Ikhamanga Silver (OIS) "For excellent achievements in the field of literature and using these exceptional talents to expose the evils of the system of apartheid to the world.

"[27][28][29] "Black music and pan-African solidarity in Keorapetse Kgositsile’s poetry", Journal of South African and American Studies, Volume 18, Number 4, 2017.