THIS AIN'T IT!

This is not what liberation entails

After the centuries’ travails –

After all the revolutionary rhetoric –

The privilege of paying with plastic,

For these neo-colonial

Baubles and beads

That we believe sets us apart

From the heart of suffering

As we strut our stuff in this high-yield fashion

Ignoring the insidious oppression.

A welcomed enslavement

To the boardroom plantation master

And the billboard aspirations

That we have been sold and

For which we’ve made

The down-payment;

Happy to believe whatever

We’re told because

The advertisement said so

And the ads never lie.

Humanity has been decocted

Every one of us bar-coded

Noble ideals discarded

Notions of substance confused

By the mainstream jargon

That not too long ago

Still labelled my ancestors

Terrorists and dissidents

And rabble-rousing miscreants

Who had to be detained.

This cannot be the African dream

Nothing is what it appears to be

There will be no African dawn

While we still mourn the murder

Of parents and siblings and lofty ideals;

Freedom’s refrain usurped

By a chorus of muted appeals

As the blood congeals

On the sidewalks and highways

And the gutters of the ghettos.

This is not what our forefathers died for,

This is why they were killed.