Memories of Keorapetse Kgositsile (1938-2017), or Bra Willie, as he was affectionately known, are of a poet who always had a smile on his face, who exuded gentleness, and was soft-spoken. He died on Wednesday.
In his schooldays Bra Willie (78) managed to get access to African American poets Langston Hughes' and Richard Wright's poems. This was no mean feat in apartheid South Africa when schools for African children either didn't have libraries or they were poorly-stocked, and African students were denied access to literature deemed to be "seditious". Even my "whites only" school library had no books with African-American poems, still less the apartheid English setwork books.
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