Today’s battle is for economic and social freedom, in particular women’s freedom from violence
Poetry, like other literary and art forms, has played a significant role in the struggle for freedom both here at home and around the world, where we’ve seen it play at least three roles.
In post-apartheid South Africa, one might be tempted to think that poetry has lost its importance as a catalyst for freedom. This is not the case. The reality is that we are still immersed in a freedom struggle — but it’s a new struggle. Whereas the pre-1994 struggle was targeted at political freedom, our battle now is targeted at social and economic freedom, to overcome the suffering that arises from social vulnerability. This new struggle has awoken new poetry and many new poetic voices.
To gain some insight into this new freedom struggle and the poetry written to express it, I analysed volume VIII of. It’s a comprehensive sampling of South African poetry that includes 81 poems by 63 poets in 10 official languages. Another disturbing reference is to a child in nappies being described as a “sacrificial lamb”. It’s a reference to the disturbing frequency with which children become victims of molestation. The amalgamated Afrikaans slang word moeggenaai translates to “exhausted from fucking”. There’s information in this crude language — this is not sex in the context of relationship or love or beauty, but something ugly and violent. More disturbing is that this line refers to a girl of school-going age.
What then is poetry’s role in this new freedom struggle? Poetry can play the same three roles it did in the struggle against apartheid. There is solidarity in reading these poems — a sense that we are not alone in our suffering. These poems draw attention to the plight of the vulnerable.
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