Known as the "singing voice of the South African Liberation Movement", Dennis Brutus, more than any other single person, was responsible for South Africa’s and Rhodesia’s exclusion from the Olympic Games. In the 1960s and early 1970s Dennis Brutus was a hated figure for those defending sports apartheid. Knowing that if white South Africa was deprived of its fanatical sports devotion it would be forced to change, he helped secure suspension from the Olympics in 1964 and expulsion in 1970.
 
Political campaigns led to his being banned from all political and social activity. Trying to escape his ban to attend an Olympic meeting in Europe in 1963, he was arrested and subsequently sentenced to eighteen months of hard labor. He was held captive on Robben Island off Capetown, South Africa, where he spent time breaking stones with Nelson Mandela.