Cautious, Questioning Eyes

Questioning Eyes

It’s sad

The situation is so bad

That when we meet

In this dark street,

We size

Each other up

With cautious, questioning eyes

-Peter E. Clarke

      I have been told that South Africa is full of poetry and full of pain. For those forcibly removed from their homes, poetry is precipitated by pain, and for those who remain in so-called post-apartheid South Africa, poetry and pain continue to intersect in profound ways. One of the most striking features of the District Six Museum is a large floor map depicting the many streets that made up the Sixth Municipal District of Cape Town before the widespread removals of its inhabitants. Several years ago, former inhabitants of District Six marked the paper streets that represented the ones that they once called home with the names of their families. Placed throughout the map are poems written by well-known and somewhat less well-known poets about hope, fear and pain. Some are specific to apartheid while others speak to the larger human spirit.

     The poem that I found most interesting is titled “Questioning Eyes” and is written by a South African poet named Peter E. Clarke. As a black poet born in 1929, Clarke experienced the harshness and inhumanity of apartheid firsthand. In this particular poem, Clarke deals with the pain of not being able to trust one’s neighbors and the uneasy feeling associated so closely with apartheid politics. This feeling was not simply paranoia as government officials and apartheid enforcers attempted to squash any hint of rebellion against the legal separation of people.  In this volatile environment, even once trusted neighbors could turn into enemies if the circumstances were right, and it was impossible to distinguish whether another’s “cautious, questioning eyes” were with you or against you.

     While Clarke’s poem is clearly emblematic of South Africa’s past, it is also very applicable to its present. As I have ridden across Cape Town’s cities and countryside, it has been impossible to overlook the barricaded buildings that cry out, “I don’t trust you!”  In neighborhoods and city streets, one cannot simply knock on one’s neighbor’s front door for a carton of milk or a chat but instead but face the numerous locked gates and concrete walls that invite no one. Those who walk down the streets often seem to be ones who cannot afford private cars, and no one seems to be waving to strangers through car windows. While the laws that once separated white, black, and “Coloured” have disappeared, the physical and mental divisions between people have not.  The legacy of apartheid is still very much apparent in these symbols of distrust, and South Africa is still full of questioning eyes.