This is what I used for my essay, Which is only 313 words. This comes straight out if the lesson Language, History, culture of south Africa.
Jonker created this poem in response to the March 1960 riots at Sharpeville and other townships. After a child was shot and killed in his mother’s arms at Nyanga, Jonker wrote I thought of what the child might have been had he been allowed to live. As you discover the theme of the poem, you can see Jonker’s rage against racial injustice in the first stanza, where The child lifts his fists against his mother Who shouts Afrika! Here, the child is shouting about freedom and the veld, which are the grasslands of South Africa. Look at how Jonker develops her theme of oppression in the second stanza, where the child is fighting back in righteousness and blood. In the third stanza, repeating the words The child is not dead intensifies the theme of oppressed people who live in an unjust political and social system, emphasizing their resistance to injustice. In this stanza, consider the details that reinforce the theme. They include the names of townships, Langa and Nyanga, where black South Africans protested against the passbook laws, one of the restrictions imposed by apartheid. Jonker’s rage builds, and she ends this stanza with vivid details about how the child was killed with a bullet through his brain. But in this poem, the child still lives. And in the last stanza, we see him everywhere in South Africa. He haunts his oppressors the soldiers and the lawmakers in their political assemblies. He even peers into the hearts of mothers. Finally, in the last two lines of the poem, the child is victorious. The triumph of the oppressed people over those who oppressed them is complete. The child is now a giant who can walk the world freely, without a pass. This is a reference to the passbook laws that were finally struck down. The oppressed South Africans, now free, no longer have to carry passes.
