The poem opens with monosyllabic words;”small, round, hard stones click” this shows how he is reflecting his anger. In the third linen Afrika uses very aggressive verbs “seeding grasses thrust”, reflecting his anger once again. His uses onomatopoeias an alliterations throughout the poem, I think he does this to make the poem more interesting to read. In line 8 he talks about the “amiable weeds” this is a contrast with the aggressive use of verbs “seeding grasses thrust”. He uses repetition of the word “and” to show how his anger is gradually building up
Afrika writes about returning to ‘District six’ (Afrika lived in Cape Town's District 6, which was then a thriving mixed-race inner-city community. People of all colours and beliefs lived together peacefully, and Afrika says that he felt 'at home' there.
In the 1960s, as part of its policy of apartheid the government declared District 6 a 'whites only' area, and began to evacuate the population. Over a period of years the entire area was razed to the ground. Most of it has never been built on.). He uses the short sharp sentence on it’s own line to express the importance he feels about District 6. The poem was written just after the official end of apartheid, but as Afrika portrays
white people still have a hold over black people, but not in an illegal sense, just by not treating the coloured people socially proper, the way they should be treated.
From lines 17-32 Afrika talks about the restaurant, he starts with “Brash with glass” he using assonance to express his disgust, L18-“name flaring like a flag,”-use of Simile he is suggesting that the restaurant is showing off. The way he describes the white peoples place to eat is with great luxury, there is “Haute cuisine” served, with a “guard at the gatepost”, He thinks about the poverty around it, especially the working mans café, “Down the road”, where people eat without plates from a plastic tabletop, they eat “bunny chow” this is a contrast with the restaurant.
The Title ‘Nothings changed’ I feel is ironic.
On the page, the poem is set out in six stanzas each of eight fairly short lines. This kind of regularity in the lay-out creates a sense of control: the poet is very clear about what he is feeling - no sudden flying into a rage.
But within that pattern the length of the sentences varies from a whole stanza to just two words e.g “District six”.
The whole poem is written in the present tense. Although he is recalling a past experience, it is as if the poet is re-living the experience as he writes. This is one of the things that make this poem a vivid one to read, and to identify with.
The viewpoint in the poem is carefully established. The first stanza, for example, puts us 'in the poet's shoes'. It is as if we are walking with the poet across the rough ground. As the poem develops, it is easy to imagine where we are walking or standing, and what we see:
I press my nose to the clear panes
This also makes it more likely that we will see things from his 'point of view':
I back from the glass
boy again,
leaving small mean O
of small mean mouth.
Hands burn
for a stone, a bomb,
to shiver down the glass.
We can imagine how his hands burn to take revenge. It is a physical image - one we can almost feel ourselves.
The images in the poem - of the wasteland itself, the expensive restaurant, and the working man's cafe - are sharply contrasted. The most obvious inequalities the poet uses are the places were the blacks and the whites eat. I think the blacks did probably have nice places to eat but Afrika wanted to show this particular comparison because he feels so strongly about the way the blacks/coloured people were treated.
Much of the meaning of a poem is conveyed by the attitude it expresses toward its subject matter. 'Attitude' can be thought of as a combination of the poet's tone of voice, and the ideas he or she is trying to get across to the reader. I think that the poem should be read in a sincere manner to show the Afrika’s attitude that nothing has changed.
The poems final line is “Nothings changed” he has used this short sentence to show the importance of the point he is trying to put across.