Verwoed is Black: Biko is on holiday
Alexandra is up in flames
Black flesh is the fuel
Voices celebrating
The cheapness of black life
Belt out not the notorious die stem
But the now in\famous mshini wam
Hands baying for Kaffir blood
Raise not the swastika & the fier kleur
But the clenched fist & the rainbow flag
This time the K word is not
An Africanized version
Of the Arabic heathen
But our own African
Fervent articulation
Of negrophobia
A raging hatred
Of any reminder
Of how Black our continent is
Not to mention our deliberate choice
To forget to remember
How our ancestors hailed
From the North and the Centre of Africa
And found the people among people
Making rocks to speak the language of art
It was only yesterday
When the whole world
The greens and the reds and the pink
All shades of convictions and ethics
In a literal and symbolic exposition
Of the existence of three worlds in one nation
And the yawning chasm in the quality of life
Of the poors and the rich in this great country
Distinguished for its penchant for mix-masala
Marched to opulent Sandton
Via muddy terraces & falling shacks
Academic lenses, activist eyes
Tourist cameras and researchers videos
Zooming on Alex children
Licking dry fingers for lollipop
& river humming a distressed
Elegy to people who
Fear summer for torrents
Of rain filtering in
Like water through a sieve
And cringe at the approach
Of the winter that adds coldness to the long list
Of the natural and nurtured
Hostilities against the poorest of the poor
But now the poors of Alex
Bay for the blood of the poors of Zimbabwe\ Nigeria\ Congo \ Somalia
Little urchins are verbal assassins
The target of their obnoxious vitriol is not the system
As we tremble in worship of the establishment
That forever quarantines us on the periphery
And shudder to confront the demons within us
We scrape our mothers wombs for new soft targets
To turn our rage against our newly found national scapegoat .THE KWERERE!
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