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Today is launch day for At Thievery End, an anthology of poems written in the 1970s and ‘80s, during the dystopian crucible of apartheid and updated for today’s dystopian mix.
I wanted to share with you the backstory to these poems and why they are relevant to us today.
Born in the mid ‘60s and having the urge to write from as soon as I could hold a pencil, I began putting my thoughts into words. In the ‘70s apartheid was getting into full swing and the world was waking up to this abomination. I began to feel like an outsider, not entirely comfortable with the situation.
On the one hand government propaganda was telling us that everything was going great, yet we heard a different story from the police officers who brought their German Shepherd dogs into my Dad’s veterinary surgery. The poor animals were cut up and full of bullet wounds: a war was raging out there, yet the government was trying very hard to keep it under the radar.
As the ‘70s continued we began hearing more and more from friends who had fled overseas that things in country were very different to how they were being represented to us. I captured my thoughts in a number of poems during this period, but I hadn’t yet been thrown into the true crucible.
After a few years working and studying, I was eventually conscripted into the military in the mid ‘80s. It was the height of the apartheid era and war was raging across the country and on its borders. We were bundled onto trains with their windows painted over and spent the night in trepidation. In the morning we clambered into the backs of trucks and we were transported onto a massive military training base.
And so began my two year military immersion. It felt like I was in a dream, or rather a never ending nightmare. I was suddenly deep within the real South Africa: Nazi-like white men hell bent on dominating the black tribes of the country in any way they could; there was the Broederbond, a secretive KuKluxKlan-like organization that operated behind the scenes furthering Afrkaner interests; there were the fanatical soldiers who would dive in front of a bullet for their beloved apartheid and church of reformation; and then there was me – a passionate surfer and lover of life feeling very much an outsider. I began writing in earnest.
Many of my poems reflect my positioning as a rebel against apartheid, an outsider, thrust into a dystopia.
I’ve updated some of these poems slightly to be more relevant to today, but it is somewhat uncanny how apposite they are to our current world.
In 2020 we are now all outsiders. We have been thrust into a global dystopian crucible made up of a myriad of elements: COVID lockdowns, conspiracy theories, alt right and left acceleration activists, new lens movements like black lives matter.
My intent is that the poems published in At Thievery End provide some much needed relief especially to those amongst us who are facing the challenges of a rapidly changing world and doubly so for those who are facing these challenges before they’ve really had time to settle into their place in the world.
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