South Africa

altNative to South Africa, Paul and Margaret met in
Cape Town, while studying at the University of Cape Town, marrying in 1964. The country and its people figure frequently in the poems.

 

Apartheid days, with its obsession for racial purity show in Isolation; Banned recognises the banning orders placed on some writers during those days;
A Dagga Smoker’s Prayer includes the phenomenon
of ‘code-switching’, drawing on South Africa’s many languages; leadership of The Salvation Army in Southern Africa brought responsibility to cultivate harmony, highlighted in Reconciliation.

 

Love of the country’s natural beauty, the veld, the mountains and South Africa’s coastline all come out as in Freedom in the Drakensberg and The Contour Path. But a certain wistfulness about South Africa creeps in as crime and the HIV epidemic cloud the horizon in Another Paradise Lost.

District Six Lament June 2014
The Other Dagga Smoker’s Prayer June 2013
Township Shack March 2013
Township Angels September 2012
Swartberg Scrum April 2012
Fish Hoek Visitor March 2012
Drakenstein Freedom March 2012
Change of Wind February 2011
Karoo February 2011
Afrikaner Journey December 2009
The Stoker October 2008
Carmel Revisited October 2008
Ndlavela November 1994
Banned October 1977
Umkomasani Waterfall January 1965
Sand on the Hillside January 1964
Isolation April 1966
A Dagga Smoker's Prayer April 1972
The Contour Path February 2002
The Empty Rock Pools February 2002
Reconciliation July 2006
The Lion's Chase June 2006
Freedom in the Drakensberg February 2002
Dingane at Ihlatikhulu June 2006
Celebrating Ancestors December 2007
Another Paradise Lost June 2006