- Nothing's Changed
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Nothing's Changed is a poem by Tatamkhulu Afrika. Nothings changed is set in district six,Chapetown against the background of the apartheid and racism. The speaker is written in first person and the poem tells of the writer going back to his birthplace and to find out nothing has changed.The speaker appears to have a negative attitude towards the issues in the poem. It shows a man's (presumably Afrika's) emotions upon returning to District Six in Cape Town, Afrika's home community before it was emptied. He remarks that even after the fall of apartheid, there is still a division between white and non-white people in South Africa, and shows this by comparing an upmarket "whites-only inn" to a black-run cafe selling bunny chows.The whole poem is written in present tense to show that he is re-living that moment.
It is part of the AQA GCSE English Anthology under the topic of Poems from different cultures, Cluster 1. Nothing's Changed was included in the AQA GCSE English paper on June 4, 2009. As such present GCSE English language students are studying it.
Contents
Context
This is an autobiographical poem. Tatamkhulu Afrika (1920–2002) lived in Cape Town's District Six, which was then a thriving mixed-race inner-city community. People of all colours and beliefs lived together peacefully, and Afrika said he felt 'at home' there.
In the 1960s, as part of its policy of apartheid the government declared District Six a 'whites-only' area, and began to evacuate the population. Over a period of years, the entire area was razed to the ground. Most of it has never been built on.
The poem was written just after the official end of apartheid. It was a time of hope - Nelson Mandela had recently been released from prison, and the ANC was about to form the government of South Africa.
Form
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. But within that pattern, the length of the sentences varies from a whole stanza to just two words. To explore the effect of the sentence structure in the poem, look at this example:
“ 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, inwards turning
anger of my eyes.
” The poet instinctively knows he is in District Six here, through the different parts of his body.
Language
The totality of the poem was written in a present tense, but sometimes he is recalling a past experience, it is as if the poet is re-living the experience as he writes.[citation needed] 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 the reader 'in the poet's shoes', as if 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:
"I press my nose to the clear panes" This also makes it more likely that one will see things from his 'point of view':
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Interpretations
"Nothing's Changed" represents the barrier between the white and the blacks as a "glass" window in the whites' cafe,
"I press my nose to the clear panes... there will be crushed ice white glass..." (lines 27-30)
Afrika symbolises the apartheid with the "clear panes" which could be interpreted as an invisible barrier separating the whites and the blacks. The window is in the whites' cafe to show that the whites have created the barrier between the two identities. It indicates how Afrika displays his anger towards the contrast, and his desire to remove it; as later on in the poem he states he wishes to "shiver down the glass" (line 47). This clever use of a metaphorical barrier, and the fact that the poem is in the first person, make the reader feel the same urge to remove the contrast in Afrika's culture, and understand his message. You can say that the poem has either a hopeful tone suggesting that the poet still feels that things can change, or an angry tone.
References
http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/english/poemscult/afrikarev1.shtml
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