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