In this excerpt from Ingrid Jonker’s poem, “The child is not dead,” the “child” most likely refers to the struggle for freedom.
Jonker wrote her poem after going to the Philippi police station and seeing the body of a child who had been shot dead in his mother's arms by the police in the township of Nyanga in Cape Town. In 1960, 69 people were killed while marching to the police station to protest having to carry passbooks to travel in their own native country in Sharpeville, south of Johannesburg.
The poem evokes the struggle and longing for freedom while being violently oppressed.
