In detention

* This is a satirical poem written to show the patent absurdity of the reasons given by the police or government spokespersons for people’s dying in detention.

• During the apartheid era, prisoners were held in detention.

• A number of people died because of beatings by the police.

• The reality of the situation is the horror and the brutality of the murders in detention.

• The speaker uses the same sentence structure,

* firstly, to create dark comedy by means of the increasingly entangled

details;

* secondly, to echo the reports of the police in order to emphasize the number

of deaths in detention and show how often the police lied about it.

• The structure of the poem parodies statements made by government officials in a newspaper and/or a news broadcast. It reads like an official document.

• The statements lack any depth or elaboration.

• Verbs such as ‘fell’, ‘hanged’ and ‘slipped’ suggest the lame quality of the official explanations offered by the authorities.

• There is no hint of sympathy.

• A tragic event is made to appear insignificant.

• The lack of full stops adds to the inconclusive nature of the statements, which lack sincerity; it helps with the flow of ideas; it is an activist’s protest against the government.

• The ridiculous excuses were presented as facts.

• The speaker starts each sentence with the pronoun, ‘He’ in order to contribute to the sense of absurdity.

• He shows that police/authorities would portray the victim as the agent of his own death or the victim of a mere accident.

• This would dispel any suspicion that the security police and the prison authorities should be held liable for the prisoners’ deaths.

• The tone of the poem is sarcastic/scornful/ironic. The speaker shows this by manipulating the language to suggest that earlier claims could be accurate, but were not, and the absurdity of the later points suggests this.

[Consider a neutral/indifferent tone, if well substantiated.]

• The details of the excuses/explanations are just apposed/organised in an increasingly ridiculous manner, highlighting the dishonesty of the official versions of events.