MARIGOLDS, KLIPTOWN, 2003

The township’s ‘informal settlement’ of shacks –

scores of uniform and unpainted

corrugated iron sheds, some with a strip

of improvised front garden – lay between

a rocky stream prone to flooding and rail tracks

taking those in work to the city.

There were stand pipes and chemical toilets.

There was no mains electricity.

On Friday evenings those who could would hire

fully charged car batteries to see TV.

 

On a flaking, plastered external wall

of one of the few houses left from when

Indian clerks and their families lived there

someone had painted a facsimile

of Sam Nzima’s black and white photograph

of June 16th 1976:

the mortally wounded twelve year old

Hector Pietersen being carried

by Mbuyisa Makhubu – Antoinette,

the boy’s sister, distraught at their side.

 

In one garden marigolds were blooming

like golden stars. A young man approached me.

‘What do you think of our country?’

‘It is full of hope,’ I said. We touched thumbs.

 

 

What do you think?

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

5 Comments
  • Sizwe Vilakazi
    March 31, 2023

    Brilliant! I spent most of my childhood in Kliptown. I can relate navigating through that huge maze of shacks.

    • David Selzer
      March 31, 2023

      Ironic that the first time you and I met, Sizwe, was in the UK, in 2004, I think – when you were performing in TSELANE’S SONG. The last time I visited Kliptown was in 2010. I no longer had that sense of hope.

  • Nomthandazo Dlalisa
    March 31, 2023

    What a beautiful art of words! I can relate because that location is in my area. It’s so amazing.

  • Jeff Teasdale
    April 2, 2023

    In my experience, David, the ‘hope’ came from an arts centre I visited in a Cape Town township. Scores of kids creating theatre, dance and art. And then to a community garden where nothing was ever stolen, because it was already theirs. Across the motorway it was ‘edgy’ in the ‘white’ area, they with a lot to lose.

    A lovely poem …. Fragments of images during one turn of the head, and it is all captured. Thanks!

  • John HUDDART
    April 27, 2023

    From the point of view of magic, the touching of thumbs does the business!