For Lives lost in South Africa

Amenorvi, your death didn’t give me pain;
How can it shake me when my feelings are numb?
African men and women, what has become of us?
Yesterday, we fought together for the peace of our land,
Today, we sold our unity, killing one another on streets
Loaded with blood-soaked faceless human bodies.

Is it for this that we stood in long lines on Robben Island

And shouted Amandla when at Pollsmoor Prison,
There were no mountains to shoulder our sorrow
And no rivers to dissolve our tears?
Is it for this that Rolihlahla Mandela died?
Africa, our Sun has fallen into the ocean.

Take the gun, take the machetes, walk the streets,

Search the alleys for every footprint coming to town,
Drive each soul away from the lovely morning,
And fence the moon, divide the sun and take the stars
Apportion them according to your household!
Are we no longer kith and kin of the African world?

I pity it, I pity it when I look across the street

Many like us are lying there in the dust,
Blood spread on the streets of J’burg;
Machete wounds cut the head in two;
And many souls are caught in an oppressive night,
Away from home, and this pen refuses to write.
It tells me, we cannot write a song. It pities it.
 

Norvinyewo, the silence of the starry night

Shouldn’t burden you to go lost in memory.
In the remaining light of the day we won’t forget 
Those we lost along the way, and they know
Those left at home will listen to every dog’s bark,
To not keep quiet when there are no answers to WHY.
They will cry, they will weep, till every soul reaches home.