[Poem] …and Madiba wept

No amount of sweet words can quench

The fury and rage that has consumed your souls

No peace talks and promise savoured in myrrh

Can restore your emotions gone astray

For deep down within, in the place where beings are formed

The stiletto of hatred has struck an ill-starred chord

And an obscene eulogy of deaths is heralded on your streets

Cold blood, cold face, cold hearts!

But wait…!

The cries of your warm hearts are tenable

But your ways are near irreparable

Like it rained fishes in Thailand, you wished same for Durban

You are hungry, naked and homeless

In the country of your birth, in the land you fought to keep

I hear your wailings thundered the earth with tremor

Your unspoken gait shakes the human in me

I feel your pain because I was there

I took the bullet for that freedom

The same freedom you trample on your streets

Remember the struggles that freed your limbs

The clamour that rented your soul

And the love that restored your pride

From your kindreds, near and afar; Black and Timbuktu

As they chanted: ‘Apartheid is a crime against humanity’

And why…?

Why have you allowed, the bond that binds to bleed

Why have you allowed, the brotherliness that builds to bother

Why have you allowed, the chord that cares to cry

Why have you allowed, yourself a pant after blood

So stop…!

Cease the blood, stop the spill

At the set of the beautiful African sun

Talk to your brothers, the sons of your mother

Call your elders, dialogue under the Baobab

A peaceful and prosperous co-existence is never a myth

The strength of the broom lies in the unity of its strands

And remember…!

The brother you disown today, was your hero at war yesterday

The brother you crush today, is the pillar for the wall of tomorrow

You travel a mile when you go alone

But your go farthest when you go TOGETHER…

Together…as citizens, sons and daughters of a father and a mother

So united our boundaries disappear with alacrity

In the face of love that binds like the umbilical

The same chord that make Africa a Mama

From whose breast the world craves nourishment

And that is the Africa I fought and lived for…

That is the South Africa I bequeathed to you…

Yet, you make my heart ache because the possibilities

Of a united Africa, your little mind is yet to comprehend

–

By Kojo Williams (Citizen KB Williams)

Email: [email protected]