On an illegal trip to South Africa in 1975 he was arrested and sentenced to nine years' imprisonment for high treason. His work "The True Confessions of an Albino Terrorist" describes aspects of his imprisonment. According to André Brink, Breytenbach was retried in June 1977 on new and fanciful charges that among other things, he had planned a submarine attack by the Soviet Navy on the prison at Robben Island through the conspiratorial "Okhela Organisation." In the end, the judge found him guilty only of having smuggled letters and poems out of jail for which he was fined $50.