Ubuntu Community
For a black writer the [English] language is very racist.
– Dambudzo Marechera
The half-living relatives of autochthonous people,
Euro centrifugal force set in motion the Western centripetal brute.
Racist enlightenment thinkers who eschewed unity,
The indigenous who hid from the sun and internalized their hatred.
Colonialism left cavernous holes in the rimy hearts of man,
Dug deep graves for black dignity and community.
Neocolonialism left a bad taste in the mouth like a failed assassination attempt,
Marxist thinkers, but class solidarity? Not with these negroes.
Koupé Tet, Boulé Kay.
– Jean-Jacques Dessalines
Letter bombs derived from the damned pages of the Terrorism Act of ’67,
The unfinished article, indefinite prisoners or war and revisionism.
Slegs blankes on self-titled title deeds, near past in the rear-view
Like black smoke spewing from a moving truck in Sophiatown.
Forced identity in the narrow margins of the Population Registration Act of ’50,
Force majeure like blood on the soles of apartheid police boots.
Forced removals, mass funerals, no civil unrest for the wicked,
No truth or reconciliation, no manumission, bonds were insufficiently labile.
Drone-fly in the ointment
Running out of running water,
ladybug, ladybird, lady justice raped in the street.
Accounting irregularities like sustained squalls,
black pepper spray and smoked paprika-encrusted sacrificial lamb.
Child soldier, the killing fields are always hiring, requirements include
five-plus years of near-death experience—
the non-able-bodied need not apply.
Antediluvian morality masked by nostalgia,
sacrosanct doctrine, synchronous shared delusions—
slow convalescence from oppression.
Low hanging fruit still sun-kissed like languorous African marigolds,
treetop fruition to spite the noisome atmosphere.
Be wary of that which liberates your misery,
the cage-maker is adept with all materials.
Insecurity-laced paternalism,
borrowed the master’s tools and started building the new regime.