Written by Grant Shimmin
In December 1988, Charles Bester, an 18-year-old white South African, was brought to court in
Johannesburg for refusing to do his two years of ‘national service’, compulsory for white men at the
time. As a 21-year-old trainee journalist on work experience, I was there.
He’s just a boy
I know, I was there a few minutes ago
and I was afraid, uncertain, anxious
doing what he’s here to say he will not do
I was getting on the train
going along for the silent, scary ride
never contemplating not having my ticket clipped
He’s just a boy, being a man
well beyond his years, and mine
and those of his accuser in uniform
and even of that judge, black-robed
whose script seems to consist
of one repeated, accented line
“Eees this relevant?”
Until the inevitable verdict
and the sentence
Six years for you, boy
He’s just a boy
in a man’s world
facing a ridiculously unfair exchange
Six years in that prison uniform
for the two he won’t do
in the brown one his accuser wears
the one I shed just two years earlier
I’d have two years left
if I’d done what he’s doing
but I wasn’t the man this boy is
He’s a man in a boy’s body
staring down a man-sized punishment
It’s the courage of the convictions
that came with his conversion
the ones unmoving the black-robed judge
“Eees this relevant?” he repeats
“Your Honour, I submit it is,”
his lawyer answers again
The judge has ears but he does not hear
his immovability matched only
by that of the man facing him
He’s a man, older than the boy who came in here
The ordeal has aged him
but mostly it’s grown him
He’s taller now than when he arrived
He’s taken a stand
and it’s cost him his physical freedom
but mind, spirit are unconstrained
and where he’s going
he’ll be a man
among the hardest of men
.
Grant Shimmin is a South African-born poet living in New Zealand for whom humanity and the natural world are favoured themes. An editor for Does it Have Pockets?, he has work in journals globally, most recently Cool Beans Lit, a fine line, Raw Lit and The Raven’s Muse.