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Nothing's Changes Poem and Notes
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Apartheid (meaning separate-ness in Afrikaans was a system of racial segregation in South Africa from 1948, and was dismantled 1990 to 1993, culminating in democratic elections in 1994.
District Six is the name of a former inner-city residential area in Cape Town, South Africa. It is best known for the forced removal of over 60 000 of its inhabitants during the 1970s by the apartheid regime.
Nelson Mandela is a former President of South Africa, the first to be elected in democratic elections. Before his presidency, Mandela was an anti-apartheid activist and leader of the African National Congress. He spent nearly three decades in prison for his struggle against apartheid.
• Brought up in Cape Town, South Africa, as a white South African. He found out that he was actually the child of an Arab father and a Turkish mother.
• The South African government began to classify every citizen by colour - white, black and coloured. Afrika turned down the chance to be classed as white, and chose to become a Muslim and be classified as coloured.
• Arrested in 1987 for terrorism, he was banned from writing or speaking in public for five years. At this point, he adopted the name - Tatamkhulu Afrika - which had previously been his ANC code name. This enabled him to carry on writing, despite the ban.
Small round hard stones clickUnder my heelsSeeding grasses thrust Bearded seedsInto trouser cuffs, cans,Trodden on, crunchIn tall, purple flowering,Amiable weeds.
District six.No board says it is:But my feet know,And my hands,And the skin about my bones,And the soft labouring of my lungs,And the hot, white, inward turning Anger of my eyes.
Brash with glass,name flaring like a flag,it squatsin the grass and weeds,incipient Port Jackson trees:new, up-market, haute cuisine,guard at the gatepost,whites only inn.
No sign says it is:but we know where we belong.
I press my noseto the clear panes, know,before I see them, there will becrushed ice white glass,linen fallsthe single rose.
Down the roadWorking man’s café sellsBunny chows.Take it with you, eatAt a plastic table’s topWipe your fingers on your jeans,Spit a little on the floor:It’s in the bone.
I back from the glassBoy again,Leaving small mean OOf small mean mouth.Hands burnFor a stone, a bomb,To shiver down the glass.Nothing’s changed.
STRUCTURE - On the page, the poem is set out in six stanzas, each of eight fairly short lines. This kind of regularity in the layout creates a sense of control: the poet is very clear about what he is feeling - no sudden flying into a rage.
LANGUAGEThe whole poem is written in the present tense. Although he is recalling a past experience, it is as if the poet is re-living the experience as he writes. This is one of the things that makes this poem vivid to read, and easy to identify with.
The VIEWPOINT in the poem is carefully established. The first stanza, for example, puts us 'in the poet's shoes'. It is as if we are walking with the poet across the rough ground. As the poem develops, it is easy to imagine where we are walking or standing, and what we see.
Try this…A good way to decide on the tone of a poem is
to work out how you would read it aloud. Should this poem be read:– Angrily, to show the poet's attitude to the fact
that nothing has changed? – Or in a resigned way, as if he knows that it's
almost too much to hope that things can change?
• Select a short quotation to justify your choice.
