Black cottons

Let me tell a story of my people.
Faithful soldiers who vowed to serve their leader’s
Even if it meant to their own demise.
I am not saying anything about Shaka’s regiments,
Neither am I saying something about Xhosa warriors who fought
I the frontier war, but had nothing to produce as trophy out of it.

Their assuppers were busy showing fake heads to the world.
In their concocted story they said it was our king’s head.
Tshawe speak to your people and let them know the truth.
We were fighting a just war to defend our land against the invaders.

No, I forgot.

There is nothing that you can tell your people Tshiwo.
My people were fighting your own war,
and it so happened that it was the concocted war.
I am talking about Umendi which forced our soldiers to a barren war.
In that Barren Indian ocean our forefathers died.

What did they die for? Tell us.
Died for the piece of promised land in Constantia.
With your constatina you forget that we were there and we saw you betray us.
Sold us to fight the white men’s WORLD WAR two.
Yet you still believe we can warship you for your wisdom.

What wisdom there is in a tyrant?
To me you are just like them, A master without slaves.


I am so sorry that even my story mentions nothing of the unrewarded heroes.
Of the land of Kuntu who fought in such bad conditions.
Yet it was Amerika who was praised for her contribution to the war.
I say, We were like the man who tried to build a house in the wilderness.
Only for him to be cheated by wild animals who asked for help while they knew that next day the man will be out in the cold.

Let us celebrate our soldiers who fought a White man’s war.
We cannot only celebrate the vessel they boarded "Umendi" while we know
Not a single soldier who died there.

TROUBLED DREAMS

My eyes wide open I sleep.
This happens in most times and I weep.

Maybe I was born in the wrong time in this troubled place.
Enough blame I directed to my forefathers, for displacement.
Beheading another human soul maybe an ill we inherited from slave masters.
How would you cure an ill passed from generation to generation, in the web of veins.
Veins that represent a tedious world of spiders.

For their much hated carnivorous characteristics: has become the order of the day.
Yes I agree that it might be your child who beheaded someone’s child.
Let me also agree to swallow a sour pill that this unknown murdered
child must have been yours , your cousin, relative brother or
who knows the son who came through your womb.

Ancestor, which world you wanted your children to inherit if you turned into being a migrant labor?
My father, what it would be if you never conceived me if I am going to live like this?
Or the question should be why should you give birth if the death is without peace?
As we all squabble for the piece of Land, South Africa.
A Piece that my fore fathers sacrificed for.

Of the land that their grand children never inherited.
Instead they were trained to brutalize one another, in the jungle of Hunger.
Let the solution come from the victims not the victimizers who suffer and make us suffer.
I will only visit the cousin of death when I hear peace.
Yes I have given up the hope of getting a piece.
But my own children must atleast get the piece of my mind.

I sigh.

The arrival of the King.

I witnessed the arrival of the king.
Subjects were busy dueling with sticks, but I was not participating.
A young man in his twenties approached the king.
The regiment came to him and beat him.
Like a disciple he does not fight but runs like a horse.

They chase him like aroused male horses when they want to mate.
Suddenly he stops and fights them like a true warrior.
Three of them could not defeat him, until there comes a man who just pins him down.
Holding him another stabs and kills him with a sharp stick to the heart.
He blares like a sheep, before its death.

Finish: they live him to bleed to his death,
I and my colleagues stand astonished.
Later we decide to run, but there is chaos on our way
We meet rebels who think we are from the kingdom,
Yet we could not go back as they are chasing us.

This chaos troubles me until I wake up.
Thanks I was dreaming.

This is my poem to a criminal (Br)other

He was arrested last month, and escaped yesterday but
He went from hole to hole like a beetle last night
Pushing cattle dung was his concern
Policeman like knights were searching for him
Wow !!! there was even a price on his head

Policemen were like young boys who rudely interrupted him.
Kicked our door, first ejected their guns and I wailed to him.
As they abruptly took him to their Van,
and we thought his festive season was to be spent in prison.
His hands were cuffed like a criminal that he is.

Like Makhanda the son of Nxele bullets could not shoot him.
He says he is using intelezi but I say my ancestors are protecting him
For a reason, that he will one day tell the story.
He was re-arrested yesterday.


Maybe he will leave to tell the story of a crime ridden country.
Which is criminalising the impoverished youth.
Even Civil servants help themselves on tax payers money.
The Justice system is epitomising the crime.

A SECURITY GUARD

Behind the red eyes was once a man
This men who carries a rifle was once a child
He wears Ray ban sunglasses to hide his human eyes
She is concealing the humanity within

There was no money for his family
He decided to sell his sole to the devilish Security Company
There he signed a contract to kill his fellow human beings
His contract will only be terminated by his death

Futsheck: echoes in his foul mouth
The language that only the tsotsis can understand
He uses vulgar without hesitation
But the voice shakes with the sound of vulgar

He is terrified and he knows no way-out
In the crime ridden world he leaves in

For a Rape victim: who is not crying

She weeps not,
Not because she feels no pain,
Not because she has not been humiliated,
But because she feels like she will not be heard.
Her voice will be so hollow so much that her conquerors will victor.

Weep child, to show that you are human,
Your human voice will heal your wounds.
I heard that they raped not only you but also your soul.
Soulless was their act of barbarism,
They even had decency to eat after such holocaust.

She will never cry,
Because forensic investigators are raping her know.
Their interrogations are rooted with fear for women.
Women with wombs that reproduce a countless criminals,
With backs that carry these monstrous figures that hear no plea.
Plea falls in deaf ears that are manifested with dirt and cockroaches

If the law cannot be with her only I can empathize with her.
I will say weep child, let go of the uneasiness within your self.

A war cry for peace seekers

Prepare your selves for the struggle
The struggle that will unfold as the wrangle
The one Sembene talks about in his strike
The voice comes as far as east Africa in Lome and Accra

The struggle will request us to trace our past in as far as Nile
Where voices of elephants, lioness roar a mile
They roar for the hide of the bag I carry
Like the land repossessed in Zimbabwe and them are unstoppably.

My glasses cannot see a distant war
They resist with the fear of the change
The change even ring warriors fear but face
Yet they rumble in hope of the gold

Yet trees with their green that invite melodious bed songs,
I will help me not to forget the sufferings of the people.

SIZWE NGOMNYAMA.

Of the regiments of Senzangakbhona and Makhanda
Of the bettles of Sandlwane and Mngqanga
You remind me of the duels of boys in their boyhood
Yes you evoke the memories of young man betting to defend their territories.

Makwedini you remind me of the 1976 generation.
The generation that never went forward with reverse.
The generation that we only heard it’s doom through sirens,
Sirens and ballabhelams, that resounded in their troubling dreams.

I was wondering where my brothers are,
I was wondering who to call into order,
when the baton became the order of the day.
I was pondering what will be the other when the blood spills?
I was wondering who to call when the battle ensues?

Yes sizwe ngenyama when the blood spills.
Yes sizwe ngenyama, sabona ngembola igazi xa liphalala.

Rubble diamond:

How will it be when we change roles?
No, what will it cause when we switch sides?
Women will become the patriarchal men.
Men will become their subservient wives.

Will it be good when we switch wallets?
No. will it be good when we exchange bellies?
Bellies of the poor will be red because they are well-fed.
They will be fed through the toil of the squirming civil servants.

The majority would exploit the minority,
And the voice of the minority will not be heard.
It will be conquered by the roaring of the African lions.
That devoured many exiles in freedom fighting.

I will keep on searching with my eyes fixed on the trophy.
Even if it will be the head of the king, I will settle for it.

Africa's War cry

They cry a cry, the haunting one
A cry that is not a cry of a baby
Mine is the cry for justice.
Their cry is for the compromised agreement.
Abortion and postponement of the struggle
Of the People of our Land.

Buried bodies are turning, deceased corpses are mourning.
They refuse to rest whilst their country is not free.
Trenches are filled with betrayed souls
Yet we rejoice free- doom.

What is democracy without freedom and justice?
Hush child!! My mother land will be free.
This is mere postponement or delayel of the struggle.
Termination will come in the form of execution and fighting.

I also agree that “Not yet Uhuru”
The freedom child, so motherless like the Hundi
Will one day be parented?

I have seen in Bholokodlela

Dark houses that used to be white depicting the suffering.
Of old cupboards decorated with the bottles of fish eagles.
Dark Expensive bottles which brands their sons.
Who could not buy a cloth or a grain of rice for their mothers?

Obviously something is wrong in my father’s village, in my country.
That has been shown by the rummage of my brothers and sisters.
They have no shame or honour to defend, but taverns to occupy.
They drink as if alcohol is going out of fashion, of theirs.

I refuse to believe we shared the same breasts.
Maybe they were breastfed with liquor.
I smell the odour in their vulgar gasps.
Which can be traced in their big brownish tooth when they sigh?

Where are the gospel preachers and elders to show us the way?
Are they the ones who are also in these taverns owned by our mothers?

I am throwing in the towel.

Reminisce on Mthonjeni village

At the foot of the mountain,
Lies a village that is the fountain.
I have gulped milk of the goats of this mountain with no conscience.
I was just a child with no sense of justice.

On the top of the river Sidubi
Flows the banks where I used to play the oxen inkunzi uBim,
This is where I used to imagine and imitate my fathers bull Ubhayizani.
Our eyes were red because of river water we played in with no fear of malaria.

Just at the knee of Qamata irrigation scheme is where I trace,
flowing of the furrows that irrigate our fields.
The same fields that produce enough corn feeding our people.
The size of the rich corn is the size of a herd boy’s stomach.

My imagination will always gulp on the indulgences of my childhood
I will always steal the corn on my imagination good for my own good.