Returning Signs: Shadows in poetic view of urban spaces

I hope Sean MacGinty’s Botsotso publication, Returning Signs, receives the attention it deserves. His work engages with or references various places in South Africa from an empathetic perspective. It represents an intersection between social geography, vexed as it often is in South Africa, and poetry.

His opening poem, "Microlight," is set in Durban. The poem is edgy in many different ways. A sense is given of a world not well adjusted to itself. The poem signals very clearly that life, as the poet sees it, is a journey of adjustment, of trying to find meaning in the time "in which you were born." The cut-open shark, in the middle of the poem, conveys a sense of foreboding, but also signals the poet's willingness to delve into uncomfortable issues.

The poem "Alonnisos" paints tension between idyllic things and those that unsettle, something South Africans are all too familiar with. The poem introduces issues of language, which is pertinently taken up elsewhere in the book. Set in island spaces, the “breezes of pleasure” abound; at the same time there is the ordinary: an elderly man “swatting away the horseflies” and “the cooks smashing up an octopus” on the jetty, and an eerie wind on “the day we left.”

 The many Cape Town poems give a real sense of MacGinty’s skillful use of words to, at once, create well-fashioned and striking poetry and his capacity to artistically grapple with history and social arrangements. His poems capture the aesthetically striking setting of Cape Town as well as the shadows and frayed edges. In the poem "In Cape Town: In All Seasons," he writes:

    In this place where clouds gather (stanza 1)

    fynbos  shrubs…../,,, drained of colour (stanza 3)

    autumn … seep[s] like something heartless, slow and numb (stanza 4)

    what else can be said …/ than the sinking weight of this place’s past/(stanza 5)

Beyond Cape Town -- a place evoked in ten of the poems -- there lies a wider horizon to explore. MacGinty’s poetic journey fans outward, touching a range of other places.

He takes us to Plettenberg Bay, where in seaside-town mode, he is aware of contradictions in the holiday town. We travel with him to Limpopo, where the lines, “you could dive deeper,” signal that we could all be enriched if we opened ourselves to the smaller languages of our land. He writes, “The words were in your eyes/I could see them rise and crest.”

With the poet, we visit Odendaalsrus and “the classrooms as clean as can be, given the dumpsite next door.” Then on to Overberg, where fields of canola annually yellow hill after hill. About this area, the poet writes: “[a] cluster of windmills watches you.” These are not just descriptions. These reflect a poet engaging with space and engaging with his country.

 In the Cape poems as well as others, MacGinty conveys the perspective of the outsider. In one of the poems, he talks of a wind that “blows the past through you/pushing you further and further outside.” The poet is a seeker. He is curious about things that are “awkward” and don’t quite fit; he also has a sixth sense for the ghosts that stalk our towns and cities. In a poem set in the Berg, the writer is conscious of the stillness that breaks and “a wind/cursed never to arrive.”

The poem "Superposition" brings to the fore a strong personal voice, one that reveals a deep yearning for connection. In the poem, the poet explores the connection between "myself" and the other person; the speaker actively reaches out. The quest is to "out-listen/each other." The poem is a work rich with connotations of the higher self: a perspective capable of truly 'seeing' others and finding spaces of mutuality and interbeing.

 In terms of form, there is a notable tightness in the writing and in the way the poems settle on the page. "Nqwebasaurus thawzi" is composed of four quatrains, while "Berg Wind," like many others in the collection, unfolds in three‑line stanzas. A few poems lean toward narrative poetry, though -- as "After the Fire" demonstrates -- they remain deeply poetic in texture. In "Sunday Outing", with lines such as “the father then brought the car to a halt” and “(t)hen they resumed their journeys,” the narrative element is powerfully present, but so is the poetic.

In the final third of the book, MacGinty shifts gears entirely. The poems turn toward a South American connection, shaped and informed by a period of stay there. This new focus brings a dynamic element to the collection, extending MacGinty’s poetry even as it extends us, ordinary South African readers, long accustomed to isolation and cut off from wider currents of the world. These poems raise the question of how, in living elsewhere, an African native locates themselves and continues the quest to feel settled in the world. They suggest that dwelling in other places need not be a zero-sum calculation (of being completely uprooted from one locality and expecting quick, uncomplicated absorption in the other). Rather, it can be a further phase in a life journey, enriched by the conversation between the two settings. Such moves can open up broader, more inclusive senses of belonging, showing how identity is enriched through open-minded engagement with new geographic spaces.

Returning Signs is engaging and dynamic. It explores various settings memorably and distinctively, but returns to the question of whether the self can find moments of grounding and inner calm amid the "toing and froing," and the shadows that linger under the surface or in the corners of the pictures being sketched. In the book, MacGinty uses poetry to navigate South Africa’s present, revisit its urban spaces and proffer a compelling connection with the reader.

Returning Signs is published by Botsotso.

Matthews' short fiction: a literary contribution of note

James Matthews' short stories, written long ago (before his turn to poetry in the early 1970s), remain a remarkable contribution to South African literature. 

In this article, I explore dimensions of that contribution: https://tinyurl.com/mewnzyrj . 

Matthews, who received honorary doctorates from the University of the Western Cape and Rhodes University, was known as the Dissident Poet. Such an appellation acknowledges his work in the field of poetry, and the remarkable way he used it to connect to young people and the struggle to defeat apartheid. He also made a remarkable contribution to South African literature through his short fiction. This article (accessible here) discusses the literary merit of Matthews' short stories.

The Park, a short story by F. Meintjies

I have unearthed a short story I penned over 30 years ago. 

The story, entitled The Park, contains no dialogue and does not feature an individual lead character. In addition, the urban park featured in the story itself becomes a key role-player. 

The short story is contained in a magazine called Ingolovane, initially published by the now-defunct writers' organisation, COSAW.

The story touches on issues of distorted nationalism, the ways in which some political actors seek to appropriate public goods or resources for exclusive use by elites who define themselves in ways that lock others out. 

Here is the story (Pages 79 and 80 of Ingolovane, with only last two paragraphs falling on page 80):

The Park A Short Story by Frank Meintjies

Things have not changed since they took their bizarre turn at the lake. From the hilltop houses nearby, you can see the sliminess on the skin of the water. Hunks of metal and bits of wood blackened by long waterlogging jut out like ugly scars. The lake is inside the park, and as the yolk is in the centre of a hamburger egg. As you peer through the dense shrubbery immediately inside the fence, you see signs of decay and wanton neglect everywhere. Here and there the wall of china fence has broken down, the metal girding with the spiky top removed for other purposes. It would be a brave person indeed who would venture into the park. No-one has been inside it for years, except the four men who staged an armed seizure of the park some time ago.

The men wear insignia of the once-fearsome right-wing movement, although this grouping now refers to them as dissidents. This movement itself has declined to a handful of members. Those who have spotted the men say their hair grows untamed and their clothes are ragged, a fact confirmed by an out-of-focus newspaper photo taken some years back.

Time was when parks and swimming pools were a big political issue, when parks were fenced and whites-only signs were posted as grim sentry. In many cases, however, conservative town or city councils, pressured by a crippling consumer boycott or repeated defiance actions by black people, had been forced to reverse an earlier decision. That’s when the right wing four made their move. A newspaper was told by two of their comrades-in-hate — who had allegedly tried to dissuade the rebels — that the four made a covenant: they would only surrender the park when a white volkstaat had been declared. They saw their act as a beacon, as a constant reminder to all the volk that unless they resisted the gradual erosion of white power, their children would become homeless wanderers in the African wilderness, always at the mercy of other ‘nations’.

People walk past the park and stare. A movement in the bushes triggered excited pointing and craning of necks. Sometimes youth would throw a stone which would or would not be answered with retaliatory missile. The council has put up a sign, in several languages saying: Throwing of stones strongly prohibited. Spectators mostly react angrily to anyone who disobeys this injunction and puts all at risk of injury. Many foreigners have come to the park, pointing their Instamatics and long-nosed cameras at the undergrowth. Many international magazines have run feature articles under headings such as ‘The Last Outpost’ or ‘Monument to Apartheid’.

At first the denizens fended for themselves. They shot birds and caught fish. It seems like their bullets are depleted, although it is very likely they still have enough to repel anyone who dares set foot on the other side of the fence, although in practice no-one has been shot at for many months. They are given groceries every month by the Red Cross and Operation Hunger. The food is pushed through a gap in the fence at night and, if no spectators are around, is dragged into the lavish greenness before, long before, dawn breaks.

At Christmas time, they received food and clothes hampers from these organisations. No-one else had dared provide any practical assistance for fear of being prosecuted for making common cause with criminals.

The state could easily have reclaimed the park, either through army invasion or the use of a crack squad. But the government of the time feared the fanaticism of the armed right-wing movements, who hailed the four last as new Stydoms: “Although we disagree with their tactics we admire them as patriots and men of principle.” They warned that if any harm came to the four as a result of state action there would be ‘big trouble’, and compared the park action to the consulate sit-ins of anti-apartheid activists.

Governments, and times, have changed since then, and the country is now ruled by a black government wedded to the Freedom Charter. Two of the former conservative councillors on the city council — now swayed by black votes — have renounced conservatism and racism and have pledged to be members of the ANC. And the park?

The present government says it has more important issues to address first: redistribution of abandoned farmlands, taking control and restructuring key monopolies, reorganising and equalising education facilities, trying to hammer out a job creation programme. One Minister called the park “a smelly carcass on the new road of a free South Africa”. People still walk past the decayed park that is besieged from within — and stare.

Ends.