Nothing's Changed by Tatamkhulu Afrika and Two Scavengers in a Truck by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

In this essay will be the poems, 'Nothing's Changed' by Tatamkhulu Afrika and 'Two Scavengers in a Truck' written by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Tatamkhulu Afrika is trying to emphasise the pain that is black people not being allowed to associate with white people, although the apartheid has been lifted. In the second poem, Two Scavengers in a Truck, Lawrence Ferlinghetti is writing about people that are of different groups once again but in this context he has wrote about garbage men and two beautiful people in a Mercedes. In this case, the subjects are separated, as you don't associate garbage men with two people who are rich, elegant and dressed in a three-piece linen suit. In this essay, I plan to compare how the two poets explore cultural issues and attitudes in their work.

In the first part of my essay, I am going to write about Tatamkhulu Afrika?s poem, ?Nothings Changed?, in which he talks about the cultural difficulties of living in District Six, in this particular case, the difficulty of not being allowed to eat in a fancy restaurant and how this represents many aspects of their cultural existence. District Six had been under apartheid although it had now been lifted. Apartheid is a system of racial segregation and repression of non-white people in pre-democratic South Africa. The poem ?Nothing?s Changed? is wrote in first person, as it is personal to Tatamkhulu, in the sense that he is from South Africa and was once living in District Six with the apartheid in order. Afrika also writes this poem in first person as he thinks strongly about the topic, as he has been victim to racial abuse.

When Afrika was growing up, he was actually Egyptian born as the child of an Arab father and a Turkish mother. The South African ...

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...? making a direct comparison between the posh restaurant and the grubby café. In Ferlinghetti?s poem ?Two Scavengers?? he describes what the beautiful man is wearing, which is a ?three-piece linen suit? and then when he describes the garbage men, they are wearing ?red plastic blazers?. This is again another comparison between the two types of people. In addition, both poems have used these comparisons to split the two groups of society apart. Both poets use their attitude in the poems but whereas Afrika writes his in first person and Ferlinghetti writes his in third person Afrika?s poem has more feeling as it is from his point of view. In the first poem, ?Nothing?s Changed?, Tatamkhulu uses his point of view to get his feelings across, but in ?Two Scavengers?? Lawrence does not write it using his feelings, therefore making the poem ?Nothing?s Changed? much stronger.