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READ THIS
This is a somewhat out-of-date social comment about life in Johannesburg at the heart of the apartheid
era. The narrator is a black South African who is discriminated against and whose purpose in the city is
purely to supply the labour market. Life is one of hardship where working hours are long and happiness
is non-existent.
A NOTE ON THE POET
Mongane Wally Serote was born in Sophiatown in 1944. He grew up during the violent days of the
apartheid era and was arrested on a few occasions, even serving nine months in solitary confinement in
1969 for an unspecified "crime", but was finally released without any charges being brought against
him.
The poet was also under "house arrest" for three years, i.e. he was made a prisoner in his own
house and forbidden to leave the grounds for whatever reason.
Indeed, if a person was "banned" or placed under house arrest, there was no recourse to law. One
could not challenge it -- nor did the banning authorities have to prove anything or even produce any
evidence whatever to justify their decision.
In 1974 Serote was awarded the Fulbright scholarship which enabled him to study Fine Arts at the
Columbia University in New York. He returned to South Africa in 1979 but chose to go into self-exile in
Botswana, returning to South Africa only in 1990 with the collapse of the apartheid system. He would
serve in the first post-apartheid parliament.
He is renowned for his poetry, although he has also written short stories and a couple of novels. His work
has won him several awards.
Have you looked at the questions
in the right column?
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TEST YOURSELF!
Read the left column and then answer
the following questions:
"This way I salute you:
My hand pulses to my back trousers pocket
Or into my inner jacket pocket
For my pass, my life,
Jo'burg City."
- Contrast the way in which the poet salutes the city with a real salute. (4)
[Need help?]
A real salute is a formal address, paying honour to someone or something. One salutes a higher officer
in the army. In this case, however, the poet despises the person or object he salutes, namely the city.
His action in saluting is to grab his hated pass document from his back pocket. There is no honour there,
only absolute contempt and hatred.
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- What was a pass? Why does the poet refer to it as "my life"? (4)
[Need help?]
A pass was an identity document which all black people in South Africa were forced to carry. It was
commonly called a "dompas" which had to be immediately available and produced for a policeman
on demand, failing which would mean instant arrest and imprisonment. It was therefore the person's life,
their road to freedom. It was once estimated that almost every adult black person in South Africa had
been to prison at least once because he or she had been caught without a pass.
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- Comment on the use of the word "pulses". (4)
[Need help?]
"Pulses" is an analogy of the blood pulsing through the veins. It is the life of the person. The pulse
rate could speed up with anxiety. The pass was therefore the pulse of black society, giving each person
life that was free from imprisonment. On the other hand, a person's pulse would speed up if the
policeman demanded to see his or her pass lest the person had forgotten to transfer it from his or her
clothes from the previous day.
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- Why would the poet have carried his pass in his "back trousers pocket"? (4)
[Need help?]
Up until fairly recently, most males carried all their important things -- wallets, ID documents, etc -- in
their trousers' back pocket. It has gone out of fashion recently because of the danger of it being grabbled
by a pick-pocket. Nevertheless, one still sees an elderly man carrying his wallet in his back pocket from
force of habit.
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"My hand like a starved snake rears my pockets
For my thin, ever lean wallet,
While my stomach groans a friendly smile to hunger."
- One textbook refers to the expression "like a starved snake" as a metaphor. Is this
correct? (4)
[Need help?]
It is certainly not a metaphor but a simile. A simile is an indirect comparison in which one thing is
compared to another with the use of "as", "like", or "than".
For example, "he was like a block of margarine", or "he was as fat as a block of margarine",
or "he was fatter than a block of margarine".
A metaphor, on the other hand, is a direct comparison where one thing is said to be the other: "His
margarine tummy wobbled as he walked."
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- What similarities are there between a hand and a starved snake? (2)
[Need help?]
A hand at the end of a narrow arm looks not unlike a Cape cobra when it is reared, with hood splayed out.
The arm itself then looks not unlike the snake's long, thin body.
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- Was it necessary to speak of the snake as "starved"? (4)
[Need help?]
When one thinks about it, a snake is almost always a thin creature. So hand and arm look like a snake,
whether it be a fat snake or a starved one.
The idea of a starved snake is therefore really a transferred epithet, where the word "starved" is
transferred from describing the person to describing the snake.
It is the person who is starved, not the snake.
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- Comment on the expression, "my stomach groans a friendly smile to
hunger". (4)
[Need help?]
It is a truly strange metaphor. Why would hunger be something that is friendly? What the poet is probably
trying to portray, however, is that hunger has always been so much part of the person's life that the
stomach smiles at what is essentially an old friend even though it might be in pain.
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