PALESTINE IN MY HEART, poems and sculptures

99pp., illus., paperback, Botsotso, Johannesburg, 2025

ISBN: 9780639878508

This collection of poems, focused on the suffering of the people of Gaza and written over several years, is illustrated with photographs of the poet's sculptures.

Sculptor, academic and poet Pitika Ntuli was born in 1940 in Springs and grew up in Witbank in Mpumalanga. He lived in political exile in Swaziland from 1963 until his arrest in 1978 and spent a year in solitary confinement in a death row cell before international pressure secured his realease. He relocated to the UK, only returning to South Africa in 1994.

After completing an MFA at Pratt Institute in New York in 1977 and later an MA in Comparative Industrial Relations and Industrial Sociology from Brunel University in London, he lectured at various international institutions including Camberwell College of Art, Central St. Martin’s College of Art and Design and the University of East London. After his return to South Africa he taught Fine Art at Wits University and the University of KwaZulu-Natal, and later served as Deputy Vice-Chancellor at the University of Durban-Westville. In 2013 he received a Lifetime Achievement Award for Visual Art from the Arts and Culture Trust and Vodacom Foundation.