Marikana March

Who does not dream when they sleep at night? Well that is the greatest gift that one can have when they are asleep.
Just had a dream that stretched about an hour long about my life as a liberation fighter. This started with a march that was organised by the "Opposition" parties to parliament to show out distaste to the ruling party about how they have handled the Marikana debacle. In my province our march is led by Kenny Bafo whom appears to be our provincial chairperson with a "Kofia". The funny part is that the march had to be 10 minutes late because we had to wait for nephew Musi Maiman. Another funny part was that the march had to start in a track field, yes the one like the UWC stadium. We are busy discussing how late our nephew is when he showed up out of nowhere outran us to the Union buildings to deliver our memorandum without other parties.

I had to run behind this guy wearing tight pants when I discovered the best part of the dream: the leader of PAC is Vusi Kunene, the actor. As I grab the microphone from Musi Maiman I found my commander in chief of the Azanian liberation telling me to stop and I qoute "Let me show the national party what war is, the people of Azania declare war against first the national party and the ANC. In this war sizoqala nge national party sibuye nge ANC" suddenly the union buildings are a scene of chaos and gunfire ensues between the people and the defence forces.

I and my four comrades are assigned a small portion of the dying old population of Rondebosch (European descendants) when I had to chase an old men while my commander slits throats of the other white victims. The old man I had to chase him, I said to him "Run or I will have to catch you" the poor thing ran like a cow with a mad cow disease past me a came back and forth. He literally could not run for his own life. My commander caught him and slit his throat in front of my eyes.
Since the commander did all the work he pointed a knife at me and told everyone to smear blood all over ourselves so as to incriminate everyone. My hands are bloodied and I had to carry the knife (murder weapon) due to his command. As we try to run back to the township someone a lady runs to us telling us to wait for her. The commander says we should wait. I argue that we cannot wait for her what if she is a spy. The commander points a gun at us and we wait.
To our surprise the lady had a weapon with her: A camera. She works for SABC and I am angry at the commander for getting us infiltrated. Only to discover that we are surrounded by the SANDF forces with a chopper on top of us. I had to scream to the commander about how he compromised the whole struggle due to his ego.
I said "All you APLA forces are the same no wonder people treat you with distaste and anger, you do not listen to the people that you claim to be fighting for. you keep on telling us that you are Nyomanda Nyomanda look you got us in jail for murder now" I told him that the system uses prostitutes like journalists to further divide us and him of all people should have known.


Before I board a police van I woke up at 04:30 am.
Oh what a lovely dream except for the sight of blood from throatslits. Oh how I would have loved a leader like Vusi Kunene for his great voice and oratory Skills.

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

No children (A Poem for June 16 By Don Matera)

There are no children
Hippos, guns still stalk
The silent streets;
Blood, pain
Nurture an uncaring anger

No children in SOWETO, Langa, Mannenberg,
Not a child left in Sharpville
Dead
Jailed
Crippled
Blinded
Tortured, yes
The children have all become adults

And so, let no-one lament
Those unlived, lost summers
Nor weep for the shadows
That once were children
Laughing in the sand

Let us not walk too gently
When we pass their graves
Our footsteps must stir their sleep
The dead must learn to talk
The living learn to die

Jesus hymns fill the townships:
‘Fast falls the eventide’
And queues of morning mothers
Search for slain children
‘When other helpers fail…”
But death can lift a man
It can reshape a trembling people
And replenish it with purpose,
Give it new life

LET NO BLACK MAN WEEP
LET NO WHITE MAN WEEP
THERE IS PURPOSE IN DEATH

Marching dead (In response to Singing fools by Don Mattera)

Crimes committed disguised as political battles
An overuse of racism in the realm of freedom
What Uhuru? A countless voting cows waiting in line
For a command to shoot whatever that breaths and breeds
Non conformism


They want us to kneel before their slander
They want us to surrender to their Mob justice
They preach reconciliation while they teach racial hatred
Young man, ticking bombs waiting for orders in frustration

Their tongues so sweet, such that they have made us confuse
The sweetness of Uhuru, with the bitterness of being sell-outs
They cannot command us as they are waiting for their orders
From Washington, least they are brutally removed from posts of glorious messiahs

Our minds are continuously spring cleaned with myths that even
Greek mythologist would not have imagined
Have you seen how weary their eyes were in the middle of a storm in a tear cup?
They had pointed their spears ready to vomit
Their Venom is like the carrion vultures’.

I hide behind my computer
Knowing that there is a single soul that will heed my call
To sing in unison against Economic Slaves of my land
Double extra-large is the size of their average MPs
As they are scornfully fed poisonous ideals

Singing Fools (Don Mattera)

The mockery of fondest love
And exhibitions of peace
Behind private dinner halls
Must crushed for the lie the perpetuate at the altar of Uhuru

There can be no peace
Nor genuine love
While our minds are policed
Homes raided
Leaders jailed
And our sons and daughters murdered

O where are the minstrels now,
Those complaint clowns
Who jest while scarvengers tear at our eyes
To trace the soul of our rebellion

Where am I
That I may shout defiance
Emerging from the hidden furnace of my spirit
Calling an aggrieved people towards rebirth
And insurrection
Against these nocturnal beasts
Who guard our dreams
And command our poems
To kneel before their guns.

Hell

To a sinner it is pure repayment of the deeds
It is what heaven is to a saint
The ultimate price one pays for having conspired
To have his people enslaved
Captured
Tortured
And often starved to death

Hellish flames the only language Seth understands
An illusion that Crusaders keep the world under its spell
Once we overcome that there is no one to hold us back anymore
As we stand ready to march towards a free future
Free from fear
And free from consuming their deceit.