The war poems of Mongane Serote: &lt;i&gt;The Night Keeps Winking&lt;/i&gt; and &lt;i&gt;A Tough Tale&lt;/i&gt;

D M Hlabane

doi:10.4102/lit.v21i3.500

Abstract

For many South Africans who saw themselves as victims of a racist society, the twentieth century was a period of one hundred years of political turmoil and segregation. Representations of racism and the kinds of subjects it created were provided by various writers during specific historical periods. I consider the 1980s as a period in which the political conflict between the repressive white state and those who wanted change was largely undertaken through violence. This article therefore looks at the depiction of violence in Mongane Serote’s poems of the 1980s - The Night Keeps Winking (1982) and A Tough Tale (1987). As its title suggests, the article analyses these poems as “war poems”. It focuses on the political themes Serote develops in the poems. The Night Keeps Winking (1982) and A Tough Tale (1987) offer horrifying images of war and the senseless bloodletting characteristic of South African life in the 1980s. These poems, as the article will show, reveal how people's lives were damaged by the apartheid state to the extent that many people resorted to violence as a method of liberation.

Highlights

Mongane Serote published The Night Keeps Winking in 1982 during his stay in Botswana as a refugee from South Africa, the country of his birth. It comprises poems arranged in three parts, “Time has run out”, “The sun was falling" and “Listen, the baby cries and cries and cries”. He published A Tough Tale in 1987 during the years he spent in London as cultural attaché of the African National Congress (ANC)
Night Keeps Winking (1982) and A Tough Tale (1987) as “war poems” because they depict the culture of war in South Africa in the 1980s
With The Night Keeps Winking (1982) and A Tough Tale (1987) Mongane Serote has offered an analysis of racism and its effects on social relations

Summary

Introduction

Mongane Serote published The Night Keeps Winking in 1982 during his stay in Botswana as a refugee from South Africa, the country of his birth It comprises poems arranged in three parts, “Time has run out”, “The sun was falling" and “Listen, the baby cries and cries and cries”. Night Keeps Winking (1982) and A Tough Tale (1987) as “war poems” because they depict the culture of war in South Africa in the 1980s In these poems, Serote suggests that the oppressive white power structure is the main cause of violence and political conflict. In A Tough Tale (1987) Serote depicts the 1980s as a volatile and precarious time He captures the political violence that came to be associated with the South African repressive state in words that indict P.W. Botha: “Botha’s voice is heard calling - /tear gas, rubber bullets/Hippos and casspirs” (Serote, 1987:28). It appears that his political intentions were to turn people against the ampoabritlhiseeidthsetaotepparsesssheodwpneionptlhe.e way he retells the past and employs it to

Remembering the past: memory as a weapon

Concerning violence

The war of liberation and the fruits of defiance

Conclusion