KILL THE PHOBIA: THOUGHTS ON SOUTH AFRICA

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Words cannot describe this
The barbarism at plain sight
The goriness of the wanton killings
The horror of the unprovoked destructions
And then the big question
The perpetrators of such dastard acts
Are they humans too?

 Our psyche is battered and tormented
Our heart is broken and it bleeds
Our eyes are swollen and pregnant
Pregnant with the flood of tears
The flood of tears big enough to drown us
And I can't stop asking
What has happened to our humanity?

 Like pencils, humans have become tools
Tools to a priority that is misplaced
Blind we are to the handwritings
Like the vulture long beaten by the rain
You know not where the rain starts beating you
How will you know where it stops beating you?
They have eyes but they don't see

 Educated but the mind is ignorant
Developing but the mind is crude
Progressing but the mind is medieval
Lessons on the sanctity of human life
And life's dignity and decency
The question keeps coming
What have we done to deserve this?

 The usual explanation fails again
Exactly like it always does
How come you don't realise it
That your chosen preys in your wild games
Are your partners and brothers
An inescapable network of mutuality
A system rigged against you all

 In the morning the bird wakes up
Dust her feathers and then sets out
To find her daily bread to survive
And bring for the little ones in the nest
Sounds familiar? Well yes! The struggle
How Kingdoms were founded
And today the immigrant's story

 The immigrants the usual suspects
In the blame game the easy targets
One thing we have always forgotten
That we all simply want to live
And be able to put food on our table
Life itself is a struggle and this we know
So why hack us down we just want to live

 Once you were the youngest in the fold
In the face of larger oppressionary forces
You stood firm determined bold and fierce
You called on us in your moment of need
The entire motherland answered your call
How did you go from being a victim
To institutionalising hate?

 Our shared humanity is threatened
The arrows strike from different bows
The bows of the divisive politicos
The bows of economic downturns
The bows of exploitation and greed
The bows of discrimination and hate
Is this humanity's Nunc dimittis?

 But.
But..
But humanity itself is resilient
Like the resilience of nature
I believe in something bigger
In human's collective will to do good
So in all of this i still see

 I can see a great beacon light of hope
From the table mountain of Cape Town
To the Elephant Coast of Kwazulu-Natal
From the banks of River Limpopo
To the sandy beaches of Eastern Cape
And the red sands of the Kalahari desert
We can be our brothers' keeper

 Xenophobia should have no place
It has been around for too long
South Africans, together it is time to act
Now is the time to condemn this dark side
To the dustbin of human's history
The great man embarked on a long walk
A long walk that brought freedom and love

 To the beautiful souls cut short
To everyone who lost everything
To grieving families and well-wishers
To a country haunted by her harrowing past
To a system that allows horror to thrive
Someday the story will change
And love will TRUMP hate

 Olaniyi Olarewaju 2019

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