POETRY AND PASS LAWS: HUMANISTIC GEOGRAPHY IN URBAN SOUTH AFRICa

ABSTRACT

Humanism offers geographers the opportunity to move away from objective study towards contemplation of emotion and the individual. In abandoning positivist ideals geographers become exposed to a variety of new research sources which would otherwise have remained hidden. Novels and landscape painting have served geographical usefulness, yet the vital emotion contained in poetry has been almost completely ignored. The South African experience has generated a vibrant poetical form, exposing raw emotion from which geographers are able to glean an insight which other literary sources do not provide. The value of Soweto poetry in understanding black urban experience is to be found in the starkly realistic portrayal of apartheid life in urban South Africa.