“But above all, the damn agony of appealing to their patience
Africa beware! Their patience is running out!”
— Syl Cheney-Coker, “The Peasant”
It is now our turn
we who once crawled beneath the boots of power,
who choked beneath the knee of tyranny,
whose voices were buried under the anthem of one party,
who watched ballots vanish in the smoke of rigged dawns,
who were shoved into prison cells for shouting freedom.
It is now us in charge
we who marched and bled to the cry of Aluta continua,
we who carried placards like psalms,
we who read Agostinho Neto’s poetry and believed,
we who read Syl Cheney-Coker’s The Agony of a Peasant
and wept for the truth it foretold,
who learnt resistance from Paulo Freire’s pages,
who buried our limbs and brothers in the Ruffian war,
who planted Soweto flowers on graves that never bloomed.
It is now our turn at the reins of power
we who once vowed to rebuild this broken land,
to lift the peasant from the pit,
to cleanse the corruption that drenched our fathers’ hands,
we who swore never again shall war visit this soil,
never again shall bullets decide who belongs.
And yet
look at what we have become.
The abused have become the abusers,
the oppressed, their own oppressors.
We have turned this country into a graveyard,
where bodies rot in the streets while leaders feast
a republic of mourning with no undertakers left.
We have poisoned the rivers — seven of them
their waters seeking judgment in the Atlantic.
We have stripped the earth naked,
leaving gaping wounds where minerals once gleamed.
We have shattered kinship into tribes,
split truth into factions,
and turned trust into a corpse no one dares to claim.
We have done worse than those we condemned.
We who vowed at ghettoes and roadside bus stops
to make a difference
have perfected the cruelty we once cursed.
Our flags are stained with betrayal,
our anthems taste of ash.
The future now wears the face of our past,
walking toward us with a smile we once feared.
History circles back like a vulture over old bones
feeding on promises we buried and never kept.
What we call dawn
is only dusk renamed.
Now our voices of outrage,
once thundering against injustice,
have thinned to the growl of dogs guarding a fat bone.
We invite peasants to our rallies,
but never to our banquets.
Our sense of decency lies numb as a tombstone.
We flinch before the stench of the rot we created,
yet keep feasting on the bodies of our peasants
served to us as commissions and perks of office.
We who vowed to heal the realm
look what we have done.
Shame on us.
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