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‘Nothing’s Changed’ is about Apartheid.

‘Nothing’s Changed’ is about Apartheid. Nothing’s Changed – Tatamkhulu Afrika: Context

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‘Nothing’s Changed’ is about Apartheid.

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  1. ‘Nothing’s Changed’ is about Apartheid.

  2. Nothing’s Changed – Tatamkhulu Afrika: Context • This is an autobiographical poem. Tatamkhulu Afrika lived in Cape Town's District 6, 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 6 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.   • Tatamkhulu Afrika was brought up in Cape Town, South Africa, as a white South African. When he was a teenager, he found out that he was actually Egyptian-born - 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 instead to become a Muslim and be classified as coloured.

  3. District Six. No board says it is: but my feet know, and my hands, He recognises District Six – his body tells him that he is there.

  4. “squats” – ugly word, suggests the inn doesn’t belong there. “glass” creates a barrier – he can see how white people live but can’t enter. “haute cuisine” – serves posh food. Brash with glass, name flaring like a flag, it squats in the grass and weeds, incipient Port Jackson trees: new, up-market, haute cuisine, guard t the gatepost, whites only inn.

  5. There is no official segregation now, but the feeling of inequality lives on. No sign says it is: but we know where we belong.

  6. He is an outsider – he has to look inside. He knows that the restaurant will be luxurious. I press my nose to the clear panes, know, before I see them, there will be, crushed ice white glass, linen falls, the single rose.

  7. The inn and the cafe are close to each other – just “down the road”. However, they are completely separate. Down the road, working man’s cafe sells bunny chows. Take it with you, eat it at a plastic table’s top, wipe your fingers on your jeans, spit a little on the floor:it’s in the bone. The cafe serves basic food and has plastic tables. This contrasts sharply with the white people’s inn in the previous stanza.

  8. I back from the glass boy again, leaving small mean O of small mean mouth. Hands burn for a stone, a bomb, to shiver down the glass, Nothing’s changed. “Hands burn” – shows his anger. He wants to break the glass – he wants to remove the barrier between black and white. The poem ends negatively. Even when apartheid has ended, he does not see any change.

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