The Apartheid Museum, working in partnership with the Don Mattera Legacy Foundation, will unveil its Don Mattera Obituary Installation on Mandela Day 18 July 2026.
Don Mattera, who passed away on 18 July 2022 at the age of 85, was a towering figure in South African literature, journalism, and cultural life, whose voice captured the pain and resilience of a nation under apartheid.
Throughout his career, he used poetry, memoirs, and journalism to document the realities of apartheid and give voice to communities whose stories were often overlooked.
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His writing reflected themes of identity, resilience, memory, and hope, making him an important figure in both South African literature and the country’s democratic journey.
Born Donato Francisco Mattera in Johannesburg’s Western Native Township, he was affectionately named Bra Don, Zinga, and Monnapula – the man who came with the rain. Later, as a Muslim, he was known as Muhammad Omaruddin.
Mattera became celebrated as a poet and the Bard of Liberation in South Africa.
Bra Don, shaped by a lineage that reflected South Africa before apartheid, Mattera’s Afro-Italian roots – Khoi-Xhosa, Tswana, and Neapolitan, respectively – resisted simple definition.
The Apartheid regime sought to erase this complexity, reducing him to a racial category and a number. What it could not erase was memory and resistance.
Growing up in Sophiatown, Mattera came of age amid music, debate, beauty, and violence. After surviving gang life, prison, and profound loss, words became his refuge. The destruction of Sophiatown marked a turning point, transforming personal grief into political awakening.
Inspiring future generations
Influenced by Pan-Africanism and Black Consciousness, Mattera believed culture was a weapon of liberation. As a poet, journalist, and activist, husband and father, he used language as a form of resistance, chronicling the everyday lives of Black South Africans with lyricism, anger, and compassion.
His autobiography, Memory is the Weapon, remains a seminal account of life and loss under apartheid and the power of personal and collective memory.
Despite two banning orders spanning a continuous period of close to nine years, house arrest, and marginalisation, Mattera continued to write, mentor, and organise. His legacy endures through his words, his family, the Don Mattera Legacy Foundation, and the generations he shaped.
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One of his poems
REMEMBER
Remember to call at my grave
When freedom finally
Walks the land
So that I may rise
To tread familiar paths
To see broken chains
Fallen prejudice
Forgotten injury
Pardoned pains.
And when my eyes have filled their sight
Do not run away in fright
If I crumble to dust again
It will only be the bliss
Of a long-awaited dream
That bids me rest
When freedom finally walks the land …
Don Mattera
The Don Mattera Obituary Installation will open on 18 July – Mandela Day – and will be on display at the Apartheid Museum until the end of 2027. This is a partnership between the Apartheid Museum and the Don Mattera Legacy Foundation.
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Feature Image: Rolf Larson/DMLF Archives
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