GCSE-readyNothing's Changed by Tatamkhulu Afrika: context, form and key methods
A man returns to District Six in Cape Town and finds that, although apartheid laws have ended, inequality remains. This poem is in copyright, so it is described mainly in our own words.
Context and Afrika's purpose
District Six was a mixed community in Cape Town. In 1966 it was declared a whites-only area, and its residents were forcibly removed. The poem shows that ending the laws did not end the divisions.
Form and structure
It moves from the speaker walking across the wasteland, to the expensive new restaurant, to the cheap cafe nearby, to his anger, and ends with the title phrase.
The cyclical ending, repeating the title, stresses that nothing has really changed.
Language and key methods
Contrast: the smart new restaurant, with its glass front and fine food, stands beside a working man's cafe where people eat cheap food at plastic tables. No sign says the restaurant is for white diners, but everyone knows.
Violent imagery: his anger grows until his hands burn to smash the glass. The glass is a symbol of the invisible barrier that still divides people.
Compare how anger about injustice is presented in Nothing's Changed and London.
- Both speakers walk through a city and see injustice.
- Afrika's contrast and glass symbol; Blake's repetition and institutions.
- AO3: post-apartheid South Africa; London in the 1790s.
Answer: Both Afrika and Blake present speakers who walk through a city and are angered by what they see. Afrika's speaker knows District Six through his body, as his "feet know" the ground, and his anger builds until he wants to smash the restaurant's glass, a symbol of the barrier that still divides black and white South Africans. Blake's speaker hears "Marks of weakness, marks of woe" in every face and blames the Church and the Palace for the suffering. Both poems use contrast and repetition: Afrika's cyclical title shows that "Nothing's changed", while Blake's steady quatrains suggest an endless cycle of misery. Both poets show that injustice is built into places by those in power.
Afrika, anti-apartheid; 1994. District Six, cleared under apartheid from 1966. Free verse; cyclical title. His "feet know"; restaurant against working man's cafe; glass as an invisible barrier; violent anger.
- Context
- The circumstances in which a text was written and set, such as historical events, social attitudes and the writer's life (AO3 in the GCSE, AO4 in the International GCSE).
- Form
- The type and shape of a text: for example sonnet, ballad, free verse, tragedy, comedy, novel or play.
- Free verse
- Poetry without a regular rhyme scheme or metre.
- Speaker
- The voice of a poem. The speaker is not always the poet.
- Imagery
- Language that creates a picture or appeals to the senses, including similes, metaphors and personification.
- Symbol
- An object, colour or image that represents a bigger idea, such as the conch in Lord of the Flies standing for order.
All GCSE and International GCSE English Literature key terms and definitions →
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Last updated 2 October 2026. Spotted a mistake? Tell us and we will fix it.