Within South Africa’s Borders and What They Can Teach Us

The integrity of the personality and poet is one that faces the philosophical gaze yet relevant opinion that winners in the political arena who are outspoken and authoritative women are generally feministic in their outlook and intellectual in their leanings towards the disposition of whatever firebrand, dazzling and political means. Digital empires and social media networking is neither a novel game or inasmuch gainful territory for the masses but for a sporadic few it means meaningful employment. When it comes to what is trending, forecasting or popular whether it be titular, misgivng, prophetic or revealing somewhat it seems that literature is either puritan or the writer thereof hero-worshiped in some way by not only the establishment but the masses have cause to as well. 

Given that the pendulum can often swing in the opposite direction corruption marks an exit from a tribal group of broader-based affinity, rather a kind of predestined and ordered influence of sound presentiment where then each sector sought to dominate thinking and class structure, personal co-dependency, to now an individualistic format of thinking, a gap of seismic proportions that is steadily increasing. This secular arrangement is tantamount to a Roman world where glory means the innocents who live in steadfast poverty cease to exist amongst wealth and prosperity, culture, heritage, livelihoods and traditions and the brutality of the collapsing society due to the pandemic’s onset where we cannot build bridges to secure both financial and emotional security and psychological appeasement for the exhaustion that threatens our livelihood, which is Mother Earth and climate change. 

Media, psychology, culture, poetry have all had their roles to play in the endowment of a cashstrapped and marginalised society. Largely the majority of a nation was overtaken by a minority which led to unsuccessful ways of dealing with the lack of training, skills and expertise to take the rest of Africa from a kind of purification plan from the minority to majority leadership. 

Segregation is more than a story about the acquisition of justice, emancipation and liberation. It is about culturalism, socialism, the enslaved African mindset and attitude, standards of protocol, patriotism and process. This landscape is constantly changing. As poetry evolves, so do our poetic voices and challenges. Being that as it may we must look not to power, we must look not to our social interactions within the context of race and faith and images of force (authority and leadership, education and psychology, philosophical undertakings), we must look not to equate them with partisan truth and compartmentalised beauty but to art and artistic endeavours. 

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It has led to standing on platforms and talking shop on the mental strain, the underdevelopment of dealing with stressful and depressive episodes which has led to alcoholism, addiction and mental illness in families across the colour line in South Africa. The need for adequate medical information, change and impact to take place at all levels of civil society, political consent is a grave and urgent matter whereby the parties in question organise themselves into a coalition for the working classes. I think in that way both socialism in the sphere of a democracy will be recognised on the terms of policy and law makers and all stakeholders. 

There are important thoughts, words, deeds and actions that generations of writers and South African poets have embraced definitively that has improved our social standing, that has necessitated equality and debate of the infinite time and space that exists in action. Whether it be political action, poetic action, economic action, mental and emotional action on the wellness of the physical body. But does the sensibility of what we are writing make sense, is it understood in a linear arrangement, can it be investigated further, the dynamism of information technology in this age of digital media, and how does poetry reach the masses if our laws cannot, what do principles and values stand for in lawless communities if you alone are a law abiding citizen. 

Radicals have a passion for skating on thin ice. I think to improve the democracy we live in we have to look at what we yearn for. Not to fail, not to discriminate and to create art. 

In the end, our psychological framework has become our internal adversary and the environment the external.

Abigail George
Abigail George
Abigail George is an award-winning short story writer, author, essayist, playwright, screenwriter and an award-winning poet. She is a Pushcart Prize, two-time Best of the Net nominated, Sol Plaatje European Union Poetry Prize longlisted, Writing Ukraine Prize shortlisted, Identity Theory's Editor's Choice, Ink Sweat Tears Pick of the Month poet/writer. In 2021, her writing was recognised by Afrocritik among the 20 Remarkable African Essays. In 2023, she was the winner of the Sol Plaatje European Union Poetry Award. In 2023, she was shortlisted for the Writing Ukraine Prize; in 2024, her poem, “Rebirth” received an Honourable Mention in the New Coin Poetry Prize, and in 2025, she was shortlisted for the Erbacce Prize. In 2025, she was longlisted for the Erbacce Prize and her poems were selected for the Erbacce Journal. She is a two-time recipient of grants from the National Arts Council in Johannesburg, one from the Centre of the Book in Cape Town and another from ECPACC in KuGompo City. She won a national high school writing competition in her teens. She was interviewed by BBC Radio 4, for AOL.com, the USA Today Network, The Tennessean, and Radio Ikrikya in Algeria. Her writing has appeared in Agbowo, Botsotso, Critical Muslim, Jalada, Kalahari Review, LitNet, Ons Klyntji, Piker Press, The Eastern Province Herald, The Ovi, and others. She was educated in Port Elizabeth and Swaziland. She is the Contributing Editor for African Writer Magazine based in New Jersey, and an editor at Mwanaka Media and Publishing situated in Zimbabwe. Her latest book is "Did You Get Married to Her When I was in the Mental Hospital". Find it on Amazon and at the ZamaShort shop. Find her on Bluesky, LinkedIn, Substack, and Instagram @abigailgeorgepoet.