Don Mattera, a renowned South African poet, author, and anti-apartheid activist, has passed away.

According to reports, his family has confirmed his passing and will have promised an official statement in due course.

The 87-year-old poet was honoured by the City of Johannesburg on Saturday as part of the 60th-anniversary celebrations.

He was recently honoured with the 2022 Artfluence Human Rights Award for his commitment to human rights and community development.

Mattera was born in Johannesburg’s Western Native Township in 1935; it is now known as Westbury.

He was well-known for his poetry and criticism of the anti-apartheid government.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In his autobiography Memory Is the Weapon he writes: “Sophiatown also had its beauty; picturesque and intimate like most ghettoes…. Mansions and quaint cottages … stood side by side with rusty wood-and-iron shacks, locked in a fraternal embrace of filth and felony…. The rich and the poor, the exploiters and the exploited, all knitted together in a colourful fabric that ignored race or class structures.” This “multiracial fabric” did not conform to the separatist policies of apartheid and so the suburb was destroyed and the people forcibly removed.