Huddled, in the freezing pre-dawn
around a battery-powered altar
listening for what our cold
but eager ears wanted to hear<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We sat, a worshipful group\u00a0
of teenage Christian companions\u00a0
on camp in the heart of winter
straining to make out what was happening\u00a0
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
in a rugby match on the other side
of the world, in Christchurch, where\u00a0
barbed wire encircled the ground, along with
angry anti-apartheid protesters\u00a0
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We knew a limited amount about that;\u00a0
far less than I would 40 years hence,\u00a0
as a resident of Christchurch. We knew\u00a0
rugby, but were oblivious to the fact
that in townships in any direction people
were struggling to keep the cold out\u00a0
of draughty shacks in the bitterest hour
of a Highveld dawn. Oblivious to the\u00a0
injustice on the doorstep of our\u00a0
comfortable white middle-class lives
And no camp leader would raise
it with us as frigid pre-dawn unfolded\u00a0
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
into frosty day. None would question
the injustice, mention the marginalised
majority\u2019s plight, alongside the white\u00a0
team we reverently congregated to honour<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Grant Shimmin is a poet born in South Africa in 1967 and resident in New Zealand since 2001. Humanity is his most important poetic subject and many poems about South Africa reflect, personally, on the injustices of apartheid. Work at Roi Faineant Press, Does it Have Pockets, The Hooghly Review, Remington Review, Querencia Press and elsewhere.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Huddled, in the freezing pre-dawnaround a battery-powered altarlistening for what our coldbut eager ears wanted to hear We sat, a worshipful group\u00a0of teenage Christian companions\u00a0on camp in the heart of winterstraining to make out what was happening\u00a0 in a rugby match on the other sideof the world, in Christchurch, where\u00a0barbed wire encircled the ground, along […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":840,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-836","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-issue-1","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/akpatamag.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/836","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/akpatamag.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/akpatamag.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/akpatamag.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/akpatamag.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=836"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/akpatamag.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/836\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/akpatamag.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=836"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/akpatamag.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=836"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/akpatamag.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=836"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}