Cairo: Sudanese poet Mohammad Al Fitory, a leading advocate of liberation in Africa, has died after a long fight against illness. He was 78.
Born in the Sudanese province of Darfur in November 1936, Al Fitory received most of his education in Egypt where he studied at the Islamic institution of Al Azhar.
After graduation, he worked at several Egyptian and Sudanese newspapers. He also served as a media expert in the Cairo-based Arab League for two years from 1968. He also worked at the Libyan embassies in Italy, Lebanon and Morocco.
He was known as the “poet of Africa and Arabism” because the bulk of his output focused on liberation from colonialism. In 1974, the then Sudanese government revoked his Sudanese citizenship because of his opposition to the regime.
At the time, Libya issued him a Libyan passport, which he held until the 2011 ouster of Muammar Gaddafi. Last year, the Sudanese government re-nationalised him as a Sudanese citizen.
In the last years of his life, Al Fitory stayed with his Moroccan wife south of the capital Rabat where he died on Friday.
An outstanding figure of the modern Arabic literary movement, Al Fitory remarkably evolved Arabic poetry. His works shunned traditional themes of courtship and naturalism. Instead, he tackled humanitarian values, mainly freedom and rebellion against oppression and despotism. He is well remembered in the Arab world for his poem “The Daybreak” in which he praises freedom. This poem was long studied at schools in several Arab countries.
Nicknamed the “Voice of Africa”, he produced several anthologies named after the continent. They include “Africa’s Songs” (1955); “A Lover from Africa” (1964); “Remember Me, Africa” (1965); and “Africa’s Griefs” (1966). He wrote two dramas: “Yousuf Bin Tachfin”; and “The Poet and the Game” — both published in 1997.
In addition to poems, he penned several critical studies published in Arabic journals.
