Why Marikana 34?

We left homes with no doubt from our minds
We left hopeful that even if we don’t taste justice
Our children and brothers will triumph
We didn’t die as workers but we died as human beings
As man in the face of adversity and tyranny

We perished because we dare wanted what befits us
We perished because we wanted to be treated as man not property
We perished because we were perceived as unorthodox before authority
We were fending for ourselves and our families
Yet you wanted our kids dependable to your mercy
We always knew it was the blackness in us you despised
Why Cyril Ramaphosa?

Rat-tat resounding on our slumbers
Nine hundred bullets could not stop us at point blank
With your hellish rifles you took a life, our lives
You gloated, when you usurped our lives and bloods like the vampire
Your hatred could not be concealed to the world
Why Riah Piyega?

Let there be trillions of profits
Let there be hundreds of lives lost for your profit
Let there be bad living conditions for rock drill operators
Let there be blowing steam of change while you
Repress any progress towards justice and welfare
Why Lonmin? Why?

Whom does he side with in times of despair?
Whose side is he on when they devour our toil?
Would we appreciate his existence if he does not deliver?
Deliver us from the enemy of men, which is greed
Why QAMATA?

Even if our families surfer pain and poverty they will know that
We, their brothers and fathers died for them and for our country.

(yes, let the dead speak, and the living shall listen and heed the call)

PLEASE DO NOT CALL ME SOUTH AFRIKA

I am Azania land of black folks
Grain grown when stones were still as soft as butter.
I am Azania land of Zenji
Truth made redudant by the tyrant´s gang
I am Azania I ran wild and free -
I tamed iron long before the steel-ore plunderer came.

I have seen kingdoms rise
I have seen kingdoms fall.
I once stretched my hands up to the coast of Somalia.
Deep deep by the great walls of Zimbabwe.
There my name is entombed.
I am Azania once land of hospitality.

I flung my arms to captain Diaz en Vasco da Gama
for I thought them lost.
We sang and ate, danced and laughed.
I had plenty to give for I knew nothing of their design.
Then one day, one infamous day in 1652,
the trecherous seas betched forth.
Three drunken ships at table bay
Dromedaris, Reiger, Goede Hoep.


As dusk was inching We met We clushed.
Their ribbs into our Assegais
my sons and daughters
fell too, in a hail of settlers´ bullets.
Battles of yesteryear are engraved in my memory.
I praise you sons en daughters of Thaba Bosio, Isandlawane,
Sandile´s Kap, Keiskamahoek, Bloodriver
I praise you all.

I am Azania - land of Black folk.
I bent but not break.
My name it self - a platform and programme
scattered the white mists over Kliptown.
I am Azania Mangaliso Sobukwe heard my call - then there was Sharpeville.
I am Azania the name reconcilled with itself in deeds of Bantu ka Biko


The name wrapt up a forest of black fists in Soweto.
I am Azania - battered flesh in the Bantustans, Sturdy voices of Robben Island.
I am Azania - the mind ventilates back its own breadth, sweat, tears en blood
trapped in gold particles.
I am Azania - mourn made murmuring
murmuring made cry, cry made shriek,
shriek drilling in the settlers´ears.

I am Azania - the feared black bull in the tomentors dreams.
I am that black dot on the boers white history books.
Black consciousness unbound only the pure I take for I have no time
I am Azania land of ZENJI -burning truth churns the tyrants-gang
truth made the dream and dream made the truth
Please do not call me South Africa

Written by: Unknown