Mtshali’s Boy on a Swing

Oswald Mtshali

BOY ON A SWING

Slowly he moves
to and fro, to and fro,
then faster and faster
he swishes up and down.

His blue shirt
billows in the breeze
like a tattered kite.

The world whirls by:
east becomes west,
north turns to south;
the four cardinal points
meet in his head.

        Mother!
        Where did I come from?
        When will I wear long trousers?
        Why was my father jailed?

CONTENT ANALYSIS

Oswald Mtshali’s ‘Boy on a swing’ is a poem that places infernal racial discrimination on a moral slab. In this poem, the poet attempts to open the eyes of the reader to the mental agony that the apartheid system was suffused with, at least from the point of view of black South Africans.

Of course, not that this can be easily inferred from the opening stanza, where we are presented with a boy, oscillating in all innocence, on a swing.

We are permitted a peek at the poverty of the boy’s station in the second stanza. His blue shirt, possibly rent in places, is likened to a tattered kite. This stanza subtly speaks volume of the unenviable economic status of the blacks, serving as a foreshadowing of the next stanza in which we are deftly informed of the confusion and directionlessness experienced by the blacks in the apartheid system. As ‘the world whirls by’, the ‘four cardinal points’ meet in the boy’s head – a symbolic representation of the disorientation faced by the blacks in a world in which they knew not where exactly they were or what direction to take.

The boy’s sudden awakening, expressed by a litany of rhetorical questions fired at the mother, marks the point where all pretences are dropped in the poem. The blacks had lost their identity and all sense of belonging (‘where did I come from?’); they were allowed only restricted cultural and social values (‘when will I wear long trousers?’); and, they were thrown in jail for inexplicable reasons (‘why was my father jailed?’).

This poem by Mtshali operates as a mouthpiece of the blacks against the oppression of the apartheid regime in a South Africa of the not-too-distant past.

On The Wanderer’s Silver Jubilee

But for thy spirit
Ever restless
‘Welcome’ would suffice
Thou the western wind dost prefer
Yet with a sigh
As miles of untrodden route
Thee summon
And the pit –
To wanderers, a mess –
Not thine to gallop over
Since thou set sail
On impulse, covering land,
Sea and soot
Thou hast no foe
Upon earth’s sand
Or art any’s strange bedfellow
As thou God’s order obey
Wanderer, spare no second
Do not be delayed
‘Welcome’ would not suffice
For what merit
Lieth in a watered cup
Proffered
When a ‘bye’
Be on its trail?

TWENTY FIVE DROPS

Twenty five drops of rain
Have yet fallen
However, you see, in the main
The fella mopes about, sullen

Dust everywhere still rises
Assaulting eyes
Zigzagging through the senses
This fella, you see,
Could put together sentences

But impotent twice
To fathom devices
That could twenty five drops
Of rain make sufficient
To quicken the ground and water the crops
And that could through heaven’s lenses
See the fruition in sacrament
This fella, you see, is me.

A donor’s woes.

You may want to think twice before you let pecuniary instigations or your whimsical bent persuade you to donate your fertile sperm in Kansas. In a story I ran into on cnn.com, I learnt that a man, William Marotta of Topeka, Kansas, is now ruing the imprudence of his haste to come to the rescue of two lesbians who were in need of a sperm donor to help fertilize their eggs. In what Mr. Marotta will now possibly class a Class A misfortune, his life-begetting juice was productive enough to crack an egg.

A good story all round, then, shouldn’t it be?

Not if you were Marotta would you think so!

Now, almost four years later, Mr. Marotta is just learning from officials of Kansas State that his little philanthropic indulgence comes at a cost. Apparently, the two women lovers separated; and, one of them [whose cracked egg released a young female life (now three)] chose to get on the neck of the State of Kansas for welfare assistance. Naturally, the State’s officials wondered what contribution the father of the woman’s daughter was making to the upkeep of the girl. Understanding that he hasn’t

Marotta

been doing much, the State is now vigorously pursuing him to provide child support for his unintended offspring.

The story gave me a good laugh, I must confess. Marotta has no way of convincing the State that he donated his sperm to a couple (Kansas does not recognize same-sex sexual affiliations); he has no way of insisting that he donated – donated! – the sperm and should therefore be free of subsequent obligations because, you see, Mr. Marotta’s donation was not artificially inseminated by a doctor! And that’s a mistake you don’t want to make in a state like Kansas.

It’s a new year!

Let me congratulate you for seeing through 2012 and welcome you to 2013, a year pregnant with our success stories.

Happy new year!