Breytenbach: My bitter advice is go

POET Breyten Breytenbach was imprisoned for opposing apartheid but, now that his homeland is free, he is encouraging youngsters to flee the country .

Breytenbach, who for years was prevented from returning to South Africa after leaving it in the 1960s, has written a scathing article on the democratic republic in US magazine Harper's. His open letter to former president Nelson Mandela is signed "Mongrel Son".

Breytenbach writes of a country that has failed its most vulnerable: its women and children.

"If a young South African were to ask me whether he or she should stay or leave, my bitter advice would be to go. For the foreseeable future now, if you want to live your life to the full, and with some satisfaction and usefulness, and you can stand the loss, if you can amputate yourself - then go ." he writes.

He writes of the fear that he and his French wife felt on a recent trip to South Africa, where the "surface is so often slick with blood".

He relates how the "grandmother of a close friend . pleads with robbers not to be sexually violated" and that the "nephew of a fellow writer is shot in the face".

"The son of my eldest brother is stabbed in a parking lot outside a restaurant, the blade pierces a lung, the police never turn up, he is saved because his companion calls her boyfriend all the way in Australia by cellphone and he could summon a nurse he happens to know in Johannesburg.

"The woman is on a first visit to the country; she leaves the next day and swears never to return."

Breytenbach says he is disgusted by how his comrade Mandela is treated like "some exotic teddy bear to slobber over", and he questions the ANC's record as the ruling party.

He asks Mandela: "Is it thinkable that you would denounce the ANC? Would you consider the thought that your organisation has lost the way? It is a harsh question; it might even suggest that we have only the ashes of spent dreams to poke around in."

In contrast, Martine Schaffer, who heads SA Homecoming Revolution, told The Times that a growing number of skilled professionals were planning to return to South Africa.

"Crime is a deterrent . but people who come back want to be part of a solution. We are also seeing difficulties around the world," she said.