• Poet and anti-apartheid campaigner
• In cell next to Nelson Mandela from 1964 to 1965
• Instrumental in achieving the apartheid regime's expulsion from the 1968 Mexican Olympics and then in 1970 from the Olympic movement.
• Defeated high-profile efforts by the Reagan administration to deport him in the 1980s.
• Helped the Latin America solidarity movement during 1980’s and 90’s.
•  In Venezuela for the eighth meeting of the Network of Intellectuals and Artists in Defence of Humanity and the World Forum for Alternatives, October 18, 2008. His poem delivered at the closing session:    

There will come a time 
There will come a time we believe 
When the shape of the planet 
and the divisions of the land 
Will be less important; 
We will be caught in a glow of friendship 
a red star of hope 
will illuminate our lives 
A star of hope 
A star of joy 
A star of freedom