Shanytown

Anonymous
African Shanty Towns

Shanytown, by anonymous, focuses our attention on cultural diversity; cultures that are different to
ours and how those cultures influence the composing of texts. This poem concerns the poverty
associated with the poor in the slums and shanty towns of Jabavu, a poor ‘suburb’ of Soweto. The
difference in culture between these suffering people and our own is enormous.

In these African wastelands, people eke out an existence amid squalor and stench. Many have to
work on steaming garbage tips among putrid fumes of burning plastic. Children, their faces grubby
with soot and stained have tears of stinging smoke. The children, as young as four, hunt for the
plastic so they can melt it and sell it back to the companies who dump it. The sell it back for 15 c a
kilo.

Unlike Australian culture, there is no Social Security for the peoples of Africa as we know it. Those
who are covered receive next to nothing. Basic health care is out of reach for 60% of Africans living
in poverty – and they are plagued by dysentery, malnutrition, malaria, typhoid and AIDS.
Emphysema is high for the tip workers due to the poisonous smoke inhaled from burning plastic.

The slums have filthy open sewers and an absence of toilets and sanitation. Wealth is in the hands of
the few, notably corrupt politicians who even refuse to acknowledge that the slums exist! Shanty’s
exist of mud, sticks and tin and are crammed together. Families cram into spaces no wider than a car
parking space. Australians wouldn’t keep animals in such hovels, so it is unbelievable that these
people pay rent! To Slumlords! These are gangs who victimise, bully and threaten the people if they
don’t pay them money on a regular basis.

The mortality rate in children is high because of disease and no adequate food, water and medicine.
Education is out of the bounds for most of the population.
 Shantytown
Anonymous

High on the veld upon that plain

And far from streets and lights and cars

And bare of trees, and bare of grass,

Jabavu sleeps beneath the stars.

Jabavu sleeps.

The children cough.

Cold creeps up, the hard night cold,

The earth is tight within its grasp.

The high veld cold without soft rain,

Dry as the sand, rough as a rasp,

The frost-rimmed night invades the shacks

Through dusty ground

Through freezing ground the night cold creeps

In cotton blankets, rags and sacks

Beneath the stars Jabavu sleeps.

One day Jabavu will awake

To greet a new and shining day:

The sounds of coughing will become

The children’s laughter as they play

In parks with flowers where dust now swirls

In strong-walled homes with warmth and light.

But for tonight Jabavu sleeps,

Jabavu sleeps. The stars are bright.

Questions:

1. What does the 1st Stanza tell the reader about the physical location of Jabavu?
2. The line ‘far from streets…’ could be read as a reference to the larger and more civilised city,
Johannesburg which was only 24km away. Besides distance, what else could ‘far from’
indicate between these places?
3. What is the effect of the alliteration, ‘rough as rasp’ in describing the ground in the second
stanza?
4. Draw up the following table and fill it in with information from the poem. You should
consider how personification contributes to the characterisation of the town and the
temperature.

Jabavu Cold
Examples of personification
relating to:
What is the overall effect of
the personification in
describing each?

5. Draw up the following table and fill it in with information from the poem. You should
consider how contrast is used to highlight the world of the poet and there hope for the
future:

Contrasts Stanza 2 Stanza 3

What are the children doing?
What kind of emotions would
they be experiencing?
What sounds are present in
the stanza?
Describe the physical
environment.
Describe the built
environment.

6. What is the effect of the following lines:

‘One day Jabavu will awake’, ‘The stars are bright’.
a) Effect on reader?
b) Effect on speaker?

Extended Answer

Write at least one paragraph in answering the following:

1. What do you believe is the message of this poem?

2. What is the significance of this poem being written by a person who lives in Jabavu?
3. What does the poem reveal about life in Jabavu?
4. Do you think this text operates as an insightful cultural artefact?