THE SENATOR AND THE POET

This story is set in South Africa in 1966, a time of tumultuous change as Apartheid establishes the inequitable racial and political divide. It is also a love story, between two young adults, one Afrikaans of Dutch-descent, and one English, set against the time when a young and charismatic United States Senator is about to pay a visit. Once there, the Senator finds in a young Black-African poet a kindred spirit in an unforgiving land. Time is brief for all, for the poet goes missing, and the Senator tries desperately to ascertain his whereabouts from public governmental officials, and makes national news pleading for help in a national address. The poet turns up dead, killed at the hands of the BOSS secret police as an ominous warning to others. The Senator succumbs to the same fate two years later to the day, when he is shot dead. At his graveside are carved the words of this poet that so inspired him.