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Human rights campaigners across the world welcomed the awarding of the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize to Narges Mohammadi, an Iranian women’s rights campaigner who is jailed in Tehran. Henry Ridgwell reports.
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When the megaphone called out for the daily Islamic prayers, the nonbeliever grabbed his prayer beads and ambled through the streets to join others at the mosque in Kano, northern Nigeria’s largest city. Formerly a Muslim, he now identifies as an atheist but remains closeted, performing religious obligations only as a cover.

“To survive as an atheist, you cannot act like one,” said the man, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity over fears for his safety. He said he narrowly escaped being killed by a mob in 2015 after some people found out he had forsaken Islam.

“If I ever come out in northern Nigeria to say I am an atheist, it will be an automatic death sentence,” said the man, a business owner in his 30s.

In parts of the world, the religiously unaffiliated are on the rise, and can safely and publicly be a “none” — someone who identifies as an atheist, agnostic or nothing in particular. In countries like Nigeria, the situation is starkly different.

Nonbelievers in Nigeria said they perennially have been treated as second-class citizens in the deeply religious country whose 210 million population is almost evenly divided between Christians dominant in the south and Muslims who are the majority in the north. While the south is relatively safe for nonbelievers, some say threats and attacks have worsened in the north since the leader of the Humanist Association of Nigeria, Mubarak Bala, was arrested and later jailed for blasphemy.

The Associated Press spoke to seven nonbelievers to document their experiences. Most spoke anonymously and in secret locations over concerns for their safety.

“Bala’s imprisonment rolled our movement underground,” Leo Igwe, a founder of the humanist association, said of the group’s leader, who in 2022 was jailed for 24 years. A court convicted him on an 18-count charge of blaspheming Islam and breach of public peace through his posts on Facebook.

Since Bala was prosecuted by the Kano state government, the humanist association — which has several hundred members — has gone underground, struggling with unprecedented threats to members who no longer hold meetings, Leo said.

Nigeria’s constitution provides for freedom of religion and expression, but activists say threats to religious freedom are common, especially in the north.

Almost half of the countries in Africa, including Nigeria, have statutes outlawing blasphemy. In most secular courts in Nigeria, the stiffest penalty for a blasphemy charge is two years in prison, while it carries a death penalty in the country’s Islamic courts, active in the majority Muslim north.

There are no records of any such executions in recent years. The most recent instance of a death sentence, issued in December against an Islamic cleric, Abduljabbar Nasiru Kabara, has not been carried out.

The Shariah law that operates in Islamic courts defines blasphemous acts as those committed by anyone who “intentionally abuses, insults, derogates, humiliates or seeks to incite contempt of the holy Prophet Muhammad.”

But what exactly constitutes actions that insult Islam is often open to interpretation by accusers, Igwe said. As a result, some alleged offenders have been attacked and killed before any trial.

At least three people have been killed for alleged blasphemy in northern Nigeria in the past year. The latest victim, killed in June, was a Muslim stoned to death after being accused of making comments that blasphemed Islam.

Authorities in Nigeria have failed to act to prevent such attacks, and prosecutions have been rare, said Isa Sanusi, director of Amnesty International in Nigeria.

“The alarming uptick in blasphemy killings and accusations underscores the urgency with which the authorities must wake up to Nigeria’s international legal obligations to respect and protect human rights,” Sanusi said.

Threats against the nonreligious in Nigeria are common on social media. On Facebook, a group named Anti-Atheist, users frequently posted messages that trolled or threatened atheists.

The atheist in Kano, in a dimly lit room, spoke with a mix of grit and fear about his experiences as a nonbeliever in a nation where about 98% of the population are Christians or Muslims, according to the Pew Research Center. A Facebook post from Bala in 2015, critiquing some Islamic teachings, influenced the man’s shift to atheism.

Once a Muslim, Bala was seen as an influential member of the humanist community; most of the nonbelievers who spoke to the AP credited him as a source of inspiration.

Life as a nonbeliever in Nigeria is also difficult for women, who already are severely underrepresented in government and other key sectors.

“Your achievements are reduced to nothing if you are irreligious,” said Abosuahi Nimatu, who dropped out of university in Katsina state in 2020 to escape being killed after her peers learned she was no longer a Muslim.

Nimatu was so close to Bala that his prolonged detention depressed her for a year, she said. She used her Facebook account to campaign for his release, prompting threats that reached her cellphone and email inbox. Her home address was shared among people threatening to attack her and her family.

Even at home, she is often reminded that no man would marry her.

“You are seen as a rebel and as a wayward person,” she said.

In 2020, Nigeria became the first secular democracy designated by the U.S. State Department as a “Country of Particular Concern” for engaging in or tolerating “systematic, ongoing, egregious violations of religious freedom.” It later was dropped from that list of countries, prompting criticism from the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, which says Nigeria should be re-added. It is a different reality for the openly faithless in southern Nigeria; they even hold public meetings occasionally. The two atheists who spoke to AP in the commercial hub of Lagos said they had never been attacked or threatened.

Busayo Cole, a former Christian, said his family is indifferent about his religious status. Beyond his family, the worst consequences he faces are occasional snide remarks.

“People are more liberal about things like that down here,” said Cole.

At the Kuje prison in Abuja, Bala continues to serve his jail term, receiving visitors from time to time including his wife Amina Ahmed, also a humanist. She went to see him most recently with their 3-year-old son.

He is in good spirits, Ahmed said of her husband. But it has been difficult for her.

“I am trying to be strong (but) my strength sometimes fails me,” she said.
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Two children scribbled petitions to St. Gabriele dell’Addolorata in the sanctuary where the young saint is venerated in this central Italian mountain village. Andrea, 6, asked for blessings for his family and pets, while Sofia, 9, offered thanksgiving for winning a dance competition.

Their parents bring them here often, and consider themselves better Catholics than many — but they rarely if ever go to Mass and don’t receive Communion because they are not married, thus shunning two sacraments the Catholic Church considers foundational.

“I practice where I want,” said the mother, Carmela Forino. “One has to believe in something, right? You do what you feel in your heart. You can’t require me to go to Mass on Sundays.”

That’s the paradox in this country long considered the cradle of the Catholic faith. Elsewhere in deeply secular Western Europe, the “nones” — those rejecting organized religion — are growing fast.

In Italy, however, most retain a nominal affiliation, steeped in tradition but with little adherence to doctrine or practice. According to the latest Pew Research Center survey, 78% of Italians profess themselves to be Catholic — but only 19% attend services at least once a week while 31% never do, per data by the Italian statistics agency, ISTAT.

The COVID-19 pandemic pruned even more tepid Catholics, accelerating a loss in faith that started at least a generation ago, said Franco Garelli, a University of Turin sociology professor.

“‘I don’t have time, I don’t feel like it’ — there isn’t a real reason. That’s what’s scary,” said the Rev. Giovanni Mandozzi, parish priest in the sanctuary’s village, Isola. “I tell them, ‘I do Mass in under 40 minutes, you can leave your pasta sauce on the stove, and it won’t even stick to the bottom of the pot.'”

On an early summer Saturday evening, he celebrated Mass with fewer than two dozen elderly parishioners in a former butcher shop, because Isola’s church was damaged by earthquakes that have devastated the region of Abruzzo since 2009.

Nearby, several close friends in their 20s were enjoying drinks and appetizers outside a bar.

They described growing up attending Mass and catechism, only to stop after receiving the sacrament of confirmation — or “getting rid of it,” as one put it — in their early teens.

“It would have become just a routine,” said Agostino Tatulli, 24, a college and music conservatory student who sometimes still goes to church with his mother. “I’d say I’m spiritual. I don’t know if God exists.”

From his childhood serving as an altar boy, he misses “the sense of community that formed on Sunday mornings.” Tatulli still finds some of that in his gigs with a marching band for the popular feasts of patron saints — whose celebrations are crucial to fellow band member Federico Ferri.

“I’m a Catholic believer in the saints, not in the church,” Ferri added. He goes only occasionally to Mass, but often to the sanctuary.

Thousands of teens continue to flock each spring to San Gabriele sanctuary for the “blessing of the pens” with which high school seniors will take final exams — a tradition that felt lovely but “more superstitious than religious” to former pilgrim Michela Vignola.

“Now I don’t even think about it,” she said, referring to the faith she abandoned in her teens. “It’s taken for granted that you’re a believer, but you don’t participate.”

A hairdresser, Vignola coifs a lot of bridal parties, most still headed to church — the choice of about 60% of Italians getting married for the first time, making the sacrament just a bit less popular than a church funeral, favored by 70% of Italians, according to Garelli’s research.

In a nearby village, fifth-generation funeral home director Antonio Ruggieri has added wake rooms for followers of non-Christian religions and is building a “neutral” one with no religious symbols. But almost all his funerals are in a church.

“It’s a sort of redemption, even if you barely believe in it,” he said.

For many priests, that attitude means that a social point of no return might have been reached. How to respond is a major challenge for clergy already struggling with a significant drop in vocations that leaves many with barely the time to celebrate Masses in multiple villages under their care.

Those who participate actively do so now out of a deliberate choice and not because the church, and its social and cultural programs for youth, are the only game in town as they used to be.

Such believers should be focused on as if they were the last of the species on Noah’s Ark, joked the Rev. Bernardino Giordano, the vicar general of the pontifical delegation to Loreto, an even more popular sanctuary less than 160 kilometers away.

In a previous assignment in northern Italy, he dealt with the other extreme — the few who asked his diocese to be “sbattezzati,” or de-baptized, which really meant expunged from the parish baptism record since a sacrament like baptism can’t be undone.

But the majority remain in a grey area — drawn not by sacraments but by the church’s social justice work.

“It’s very reductionist to have as the only measure those who practice (the faith). The Holy Spirit is at work everywhere, it doesn’t belong only to Catholics,” said Archbishop Erio Castellucci, the vice president of the Italian bishops’ conference.

That might appeal to Federica Nobile, 33, who defines herself as “Catholic but not too much.” Raised in a very observant family, she felt she needed to exorcise “the absurd fear of hell” she grew up with.

“I tried to get above the concept of good vs. evil. Looking for nuances allows me to live a lot better,” said the branding strategist and fiction author.

In the provincial capital of Teramo, when Marco Palareti asked the middle-school students in his optional religion class to rank values, family and freedom came first — and faith dead last.

“Kids’ attitude has changed, because in earlier times almost all of them had a life in the parish, while today many don’t go or go only for the sacraments” of First Communion and confirmation, added Palareti, who has taught religion for 36 years.

It’s an attitude that Pietro di Bartolomeo remembers well. When he was a teen bullied because of his family’s strong faith, he “saw God as a loser.” Now a 45-year-old father of five, he runs a Bible group for teens in Teramo.

He believes the Church needs to evangelize more — or it’s doomed to irrelevance.

“The old ladies sooner or later will go to the Creator, and that’s where the cycle stops,” he said.
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The U.S. State Department is marking the 60th anniversary of its Office of Art in Embassies, a government partnership with art communities to promote democratic values. VOA’s Saqib Ul Islam shows us two of its traveling exhibitions that were on display in Washington.
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It’s been more than 20 years since “Spy Kids” made its way to movie theaters around the world. Filmmaker Robert Rodriguez has rebooted the franchise to attract a new generation. VOA’s Veronica Villafañe spoke with the director and has more in this report.
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Imprisoned Iranian activist Narges Mohammadi won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday in recognition of her tireless campaigning for women’s rights and democracy and against the death penalty.

Mohammadi, 51, has kept up her activism despite numerous arrests by Iranian authorities and spending years behind bars.

“This prize is first and foremost a recognition of the very important work of a whole movement in Iran with its undisputed leader, Nargis Mohammadi,” said Berit Reiss-Andersen, the chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee who announced the prize in Oslo.

She said the committee hopes the prize “is an encouragement to continue the work in whichever form this movement finds to be fitting.” She also urged Iran to release Mohammadi in time for the prize ceremony on Dec. 10.

For nearly all of Mohammadi’s life, Iran has been governed by a Shiite theocracy headed by the country’s supreme leader. While women hold jobs, academic positions and even government appointments, their lives can be tightly controlled.

Laws require all women to at least wear a headscarf, or hijab, to cover their hair as a sign of piety. Iran and neighboring Afghanistan remain the only countries that mandate it.

In a statement to The New York Times, Mohammadi said the “global support and recognition of my human rights advocacy makes me more resolved, more responsible, more passionate and more hopeful.”

“I also hope this recognition makes Iranians protesting for change stronger and more organized,” she added. “Victory is near.”

Mohammadi has been imprisoned 13 times and convicted five times, according to Reiss-Andersen. In total, she has been sentenced to 31 years in prison. Mohammadi’s most recent incarceration began when she was detained in 2021 after she attended a memorial for a person killed in nationwide protests sparked by an increase in gasoline prices.

She has been held at Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison, whose inmates include those with Western ties and political prisoners. Physical and sexual abuse of women in prisons, something Mohammadi has campaigned against both outside of and behind bars, remains endemic.

Mohammadi is the 19th woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize and the second Iranian woman, after human rights activist Shirin Ebadi won the award in 2003.

It’s the fifth time in the 122-year history of the awards that the peace prize has been given to someone who is in prison or under house arrest. Last year, the top human rights advocate in Belarus, Ales Bialiatski, was among the winners. He remains imprisoned.

Mohammadi was behind bars for the recent protests over the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody. That sparked one of the most intense challenges ever to Iran’s theocracy. More than 500 people were killed in a heavy security crackdown while over 22,000 others were arrested.

From behind bars, she contributed an opinion piece for The New York Times.

“What the government may not understand is that the more of us they lock up, the stronger we become,” she wrote.

There was no immediate reaction from Iranian state television and other state-controlled media. Some semiofficial news agencies acknowledged Mohammadi’s win in online messages, citing foreign press reports.

Before being jailed, Mohammadi was vice president of the banned Defenders of Human Rights Center in Iran. Ebadi, who Mohammadi is close to, founded the center.

In 2018, Mohammadi, an engineer, was awarded the Andrei Sakharov Prize. Earlier this year, PEN America, which advocates for freedom of speech, gave Mohammadi its PEN/Barbey Freedom to Write Award. The organization applauded her win.

The choice “is a tribute to her courage and that of countless women and girls who have poured out into the streets of Iran and faced down one of the world’s most brutal and stubborn regimes, risking their lives to demand their rights,” PEN America CEO Suzanne Nossel said in a statement.

The Nobel Prizes carry a cash award of 11 million Swedish kronor (about $1 million). Winners also receive an 18-carat gold medal and diploma at the award ceremonies in December.

In addition to Bialiatski, human rights activists from Ukraine and Russia also shared last year’s prize, in what was seen as a strong rebuke to Russian President Vladimir Putin after his invasion of Ukraine.

Other previous winners include Nelson Mandela, Barack Obama, Mikhail Gorbachev, Aung San Suu Kyi and the United Nations.

Unlike the other Nobel prizes that are selected and announced in Stockholm, founder Alfred Nobel decreed that the peace prize be decided and awarded in Oslo by the five-member Norwegian Nobel Committee. The independent panel is appointed by the Norwegian parliament.

The peace prize was the fifth of this year’s prizes to be announced. A day earlier, the Nobel committee awarded Norwegian writer Jon Fosse the prize for literature. On Wednesday, the chemistry prize went to U.S.-based scientists who study quantum dots — whose applications include electronics and medical imaging.

The physics prize went Tuesday to three scientists who gave us the first glimpse into the superfast world of spinning electrons. A pair of scientists whose work enabled mRNA vaccines against COVID-19 won the Nobel Prize in medicine on Monday.

Nobels season ends next week with the announcement of the winner of the economics prize, formally known as the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel.
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For years, Chinese officials have referred to the Tiananmen massacre as “political turmoil” and have attempted to make the violence of June 4, 1989, disappear.

Estimates of the death toll range from several hundred people to more than 10,000, though there has never been an official tally released. Thousands more were injured by troops who charged the student-led pro-democracy demonstration that began massing in Beijing’s vast open space in mid-April.

Against that backdrop, Tiananmen: A New Musical weaves a love story between two students in a production that opened Wednesday at the Phoenix Theatre Company in Arizona. Its world premiere will be Friday night.  

Wu’er Kaixi, who was one of the protest leaders and who now lives in Taiwan where he is a pro-democracy activist, served as a creative consultant.  

It is the latest in a subset of musicals that tackle serious issues. Cabaret addresses homophobia, antisemitism and the rise of Nazi Germany. Dear Evan Hansen grapples with suicide and bullying.  

It took three years to produce Tiananmen. Beijing’s growing willingness to track down its critics and exert pressure on them left many who auditioned wary of accepting roles that jeopardize family or business interests in China.  

The show’s musical director, theater veteran Darren Lee, told VOA Mandarin that before accepting the job, he had a career first: calling his parents to see if there were relatives still in China who would be endangered.

His family’s “most studious aunt” with the best “memory and connection to where we’ve all come from” greenlit Lee’s participation. The show’s original Chinese American director left the show because of “potential for retribution against his family in China if he were involved in telling this story,” Lee told Phoenix magazine.  

Lee said one of the core messages of the Tiananmen play is to explore the impact of this “long arm of fear” on people.  

“I’m an American-born Chinese person. I may share DNA with people in China, but I don’t have direct relatives that would be pressured in any way. So, I don’t have that same sense of — I guess it’s fear,” he said.

Producer Jason Rose said others involved in the show opted out due to concerns about family or business interests in China. Others used stage names or were credited as “Anonymous.”

Rose told VOA Mandarin he respected those decisions, but the show kept moving ahead despite possible pressure from Beijing.

“That’s what drew me to this show,” he said. “It is provocative. It is important. It is a celebration of bravery by these artists. … That is American art at its best, and to allow another country to dictate what’s going to be on the American stage — I’m sorry, that’s where I’ll hold up my hand and say, ‘Let’s go try and do this.’”

And while Kaixi hopes audiences will feel the students’ courage and the atmosphere of hope that permeated Tiananmen Square, he wants people to realize that the rulers of today’s China are no different from those who “decided to shoot and kill people” in 1989.

That view is reflected in a scene described by Rose in an opinion piece Sept. 15 in the Arizona Capitol Times. China’s leader in 1989, Deng Xiaoping, walking through the carnage left by the government’s attack, delivers a monologue: “People will forget what happened here. People will forget what we did here. Westerners will. China will. Because you will want smartphones. Because Beijing will want skyscrapers. Twenty-thousand dying will bring 20 years of stability. Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun. And at the edge of memory, who defines the truth? Me.”

VOA Mandarin sought comment from the Chinese Consulate General in San Francisco but did not receive a response.

Ellie Wang, who stars opposite Kennedy Kanagawa in Tiananmen, told Playbill, “This production is not just a celebration of art and storytelling but a powerful reminder of the importance of courage, resilience, and the universal desire for freedom.” 

Wen Baoling, a Hong Konger who lives in San Francisco, traveled to Phoenix to attend a preview of the show, which has a book by Scott Elmegreen, with music and lyrics by Drew Fornarola.

“I really wanted to support this team of very brave people who made this show about the Tiananmen massacre,” she said. “The Chinese regime tries to put a lot of pressure on people, even outside of China. So, we can’t really let the censorship — this complete erasure of history — we can’t let the Chinese regime extend that censorship outside of China and into the U.S.”

Audience member Jerry Vineyard told VOA Mandarin he had followed the Tiananmen protests when they began. He said the musical “brought up a lot of memories for me … because I remember I was in high school, I was 17, when all this happened. And I felt a lot of hope when I saw that started to happen. And then it just seemed like it was all dashed and crushed. And then … they mentioned in the play, the [Berlin] Wall came down shortly after. So, [Tiananmen] kind of got brushed away in history.”

Kaixi said the students’ pro-democracy movement of 1989 remains “unfinished business.”

“I hope everyone will remember this history, respect this history, and eulogize this history. This generation of young people, with their dedication and their bravery, can achieve the results we wanted,” he said.
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A photo of Dick Butkus sneering behind his facemask filled the cover of Sports Illustrated’s 1970 NFL preview, topped by the headline, “The Most Feared Man in the Game.” Opponents who wound up on the business end of his bone-rattling hits could testify that wasn’t an exaggeration. 

Butkus, a middle linebacker for the Chicago Bears whose speed and ferocity set the standards for the position in the modern era, died Thursday, the team announced. He was 80. 

According to a statement released by the team, Butkus’ family confirmed that he died in his sleep at his home in Malibu, California. 

Butkus was a first-team All-Pro five times and made the Pro Bowl in eight of his nine seasons before a knee injury forced him to retire at 31. He was the quintessential Monster of the Midway and was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1979, his first year of eligibility. He is still considered one of the greatest defensive players in league history. 

“Dick Butkus was a fierce and passionate competitor who helped define the linebacker position as one of the NFL’s all-time greats. Dick’s intuition, toughness and athleticism made him the model linebacker whose name will forever be linked to the position and the Chicago Bears,” NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said in a statement. “We also remember Dick as a longtime advocate for former players, and players at all levels of the game.” 

A moment of silence honoring Butkus was held before the Bears played  the Washington Commanders on Thursday night. 

Trading on his image as the toughest guy in the room, Butkus enjoyed a long second career as a sports broadcaster, an actor in movies and TV series, and a sought-after pitchman for products ranging from antifreeze to beer. Whether the script called for comedy or drama, Butkus usually resorted to playing himself, often with his gruff exterior masking a softer side. 

“I wouldn’t ever go out to hurt anybody deliberately,” Butkus replied tongue-in-cheek when asked about his on-field reputation. “Unless it was, you know, important … like a league game or something.” 

Butkus was the rare pro athlete who played his entire career close to home. He was a star linebacker, fullback and kicker at Chicago Vocational High who went on to play at the University of Illinois. Born on December 9, 1942, as the youngest of eight children, he grew up on the city’s South Side as a fan of the Chicago Cardinals, the Bears’ crosstown rivals. 

But after being drafted in the first round in 1965 by both the Bears and Denver Broncos (at the time, a member of the now-defunct American Football League), Butkus chose to remain in Chicago and play for NFL founder and coach George Halas. The Bears also added future Hall of Fame running back Gale Sayers to the roster that year with another first-round pick. 

“He was Chicago’s son,” Bears chairman George McCaskey, Halas’ grandson, said in a statement. “He exuded what our great city is about and, not coincidentally, what George Halas looked for in a player: toughness, smarts, instincts, passion and leadership. He refused to accept anything less than the best from himself, or from his teammates.” 

Butkus inherited the middle linebacker job from Bill George, a Hall of Famer credited with popularizing the position in the NFL. In 1954, George abandoned his three-point stance in the middle of the defensive line and started each play several paces removed, a vantage point that allowed him to watch plays unfold and then race to the ball. 

Butkus, however, brought speed, agility and a scorched-earth attitude to the job that his predecessors only imagined. He intercepted five passes, recovered six fumbles and was unofficially credited with forcing six more in his rookie year, topping it off with the first of eight straight Pro Bowl appearances. But his reputation as a disruptor extended well past the ability to take away the football. 

Butkus would hit runners high, wrap them up and drive them to the ground like a rag doll. Playboy magazine once described him as “the meanest, angriest, toughest, dirtiest” player in the NFL and an “animal, a savage, subhuman.” Descriptions like that never sat well with Butkus. But they were also hard to argue. 

Several opponents claimed Butkus poked them in the face or bit them in pileups, and he acknowledged that during warmups, “I would manufacture things to make me mad.” When the Detroit Lions unveiled an I-formation against the Bears at old Tigers Stadium, Butkus knocked every member of the “I” — the center, quarterback, fullback and halfback — out of the game. 

And he didn’t always stop there. Several times Butkus crashed into ball carriers well past the sidelines. More than once he pursued them onto running tracks surrounding the field and even into the stands. 

“Just to hit people wasn’t good enough,” teammate Ed O’Bradovich said. “He loved to crush people.” 

Despite those efforts, the Bears lost plenty more games during his tenure than they won, going 48-74-4. Dealing with tendon problems that began in high school, Butkus suffered a serious injury to his right knee during the 1970 season and had preventive surgery before the next one. He considered a second operation after being sidelined nine games into the 1973 season. 

When a surgeon asked him “how a man in your shape can play football, or why you would even want to,” Butkus announced his retirement in May 1974. 

Soon after, Butkus sued the Bears for $1.6 million, contending he was provided inadequate medical care and owed the four years of salary remaining on his contract. The lawsuit was settled for $600,000, but Butkus and Halas didn’t speak for five years. 

Butkus, like Sayers, never reached the postseason. The Bears won the 1963 championship and by the time they made the playoffs again in 1977, Butkus and Sayers were long gone. 

After leaving football, Butkus became an instant celebrity. He appeared in “The Longest Yard” in 1974 and a dozen feature films over the next 15 years, as well as the sitcoms “My Two Dads” and “Hang Time.” He also returned to the Bears as a radio analyst in 1985, and replaced Jimmy “The Greek” Snyder on CBS’s “The NFL Today” pregame show in 1988. 

Through the Butkus Foundation, he helped establish a program at a Southern California hospital to encourage early screenings to detect heart disease. He promoted a campaign to encourage high school athletes to train and eat well and avoid performance-enhancing drugs. 

The foundation oversees the Butkus Award, established in 1985 to honor college football’s best linebacker. It was expanded in 2008 to include pros and high school players. 

Butkus is survived by his wife, Helen, and children Ricky, Matt and Nikki. Nephew Luke Butkus has coached in college and the NFL, including time with the Bears.
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Zimbabwean author Tsitsi Dangarembga received the Africa Freedom Prize in Johannesburg on Thursday, which is awarded to individuals who “have shown remarkable courage and dedication to advancing the cause of freedom, democracy and human rights on the African continent.”

Tsitsi Dangarembga has long been one of Zimbabwe’s most highly regarded and beloved fiction writers — from her lauded first novel “Nervous Conditions” in 1988 to “This Mournable Body,” which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2020. 

Tinashe Mushakavanhu, a research fellow at the University of Oxford who specializes in Zimbabwean literature, said Dangarembga has a place in the modern canon.

“Her most important contribution is being the first Black, Zimbabwean woman writer to publish a novel in English. In that sense, she is a pioneer and a leading light, so much that her book, “Nervous Conditions,” is considered one of the best African books of the 20th century,” said Mushakavanhu.

That’s one of the reasons the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom, which promotes liberal politics and democracy around the world, is awarding Dangarembga their greatest honor today. She is also the recipient of the 2021 PEN International Award for Freedom of Expression. 

Aside from her writing, Dangarembga has made headlines for her political activism. The 64-year-old was convicted by a Zimbabwean court last year of “inciting violence” after staging a peaceful protest with a friend during which the two women stood quietly on a roadside holding placards calling for political reform. That conviction was overturned earlier this year by a higher court.  

So, would Dangarembga consider herself a political writer?

“I don’t conceive of myself as an activist writer. I conceive of myself as a person who has a story to tell, and my story has an intention. My intention is to tell stories in which Zimbabweans can see themselves reflected. And I think that is important for the well-being of the individual — to understand the complexities of the lives they are living and the challenges, and to possibly point to possible solutions. And I think when individuals are able to engage in that process, it leads to the health of the nation,” she said.

After independence in 1980, the former British colony was ruled by one man, Robert Mugabe, for almost four decades until he was overthrown in a bloodless coup in 2017. His successor from the same party, President Emmerson Mnangagwa, has failed to fix the country’s broken economy and has cracked down on dissent.

The political opposition called the last elections, held in August, a fraud, and the Southern African Development Community, which sent a mission to observe polls, expressed concerns over the fairness of the vote.

Among the previous winners of the Africa Freedom Prize are Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

Danai Mupotsa, a senior lecturer in African literature at Johannesburg’s Witwatersrand University, notes that female writers from the continent have been receiving more attention and accolades lately.

“There’s definitely a particular kind of moment for African writers and African women writers, I think, in particularly the last 10 years,” said Mupotsa.

Asked about this, Dangarembga said what it indicates is the publishing world has “’shifted to open up” and is publishing more work by African woman writers.
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