Transcriber: Emilie Andry Reviewer: Sadegh Vahdati Nia
Hi.
Growing up in Eswatini, which is a largely homogenous country,
I had never had to think about blackness,
what it means to be African,
until the age of seventeen,
where I found myself at a high school in South Africa.
South Africa, a country which still battles
the residual tensions of apartheid.
And for my young teenage mind,
there were often experiences and encounters that I had
that I didn’t quite understand what was going on, but I just knew there was
something.
There was something that wasn’t okay.
Just an interesting example.
I remember one of our teachers decided it would be a good idea
to have a debate on
whether or not apartheid brought more good than harm.
And I was just like
I don’t know, but this is weird.
So I think that experience of, for the first time,
continuously being exposed to these very weird conversations and also, you know,
in high school, you’re from this different country,
some children, you know, would make fun of my country as a joke,
sometimes not so much a joke, and, you know, I’ll get annoyed,
and I’d always ask myself, where do these perceptions come from?
You know, especially when you notice that maybe it was a joke, but then,
you know, there's a part of this person that kind of,
sort of maybe believes what they say.
And that experience took me on a journey
to think about blackness, to think about Africanness,
especially even in spaces like southern Africa where it was more of
a settler type of colonialism,
as opposed to some other spaces where there was a lot more extraction.
And I think that journey took me to where we are today.
I have a set of three poems
that I have dedicated to other countries, like my own,
where
we are still seeing some of the impacts
of the questions that were raised in my time.
What does it mean to be black? What does it mean to be African?
So I hope you enjoy.
My sets is called “Poems for the Plantation Nations”.
The blood of the dove, which once sang songs,
now stains the water in the well.
The children drink of the reddened liquid.
They thirst for peace.
Will their thirst ever be quenched?
Up on the mountains,
bandits stole and slaughtered a lamb,
left pieces of its carcass on the valley floor after eating the choice meats.
Children devour the leftovers.
They hunger for salvation.
Will their stomachs ever be filled?
“Will you give me a hand?” said the master.
The limbs of the children make fertile the soil they toil.
How thick the forest grow.
The children seek shade beneath the trees in remembrance of being whole.
Sacrificed to save a few.
will their sacrifice be remembered at all?
Will the wind carry their stories
further than the boundaries of their family lineages?
Will the fires which hurt their tails continue to burn?
Or will they be left with nothing but ash to rub on their faces?
The ash is just dirts to the untrained eye, their home a dark continent.
Will the lights reach there tomorrow?
The flowers which grow over unmarked graves.
Will their aroma perfume away the stench
of dung infested countries?
Or will the oppression linger?
The Broken Bread Festa.
The stolen limbs pile higher
and the bloodied water overflow.
Children of the massacre.
(speaks a foreign language)
(Applause)
One for the master, one for the dame.
One bullet
for the little boy
who lives down the lane.
Dip your fingers into our wounds and smear your doorframe.
Hopefully the scourge will pass you by.
Pound the streets with determined feet,
need our blood into the pavements.
Let our sacrificed bodies sustain you.
Our broken flesh, a holy communion.
Do this in remembrance.
In remembrance of all those that died,
in remembrance of the lack of opportunities
and the hopes sprawled beside to save you, at least tried,
to drag the sun back into our skies. For some times it seems to refuse to rise.
And when darkness falls, Lord, help us all.
For who knows what lurks behind the shadows.
Maybe a soldier.
Maybe a king.
Maybe a dictator, a pharaoh, an emperor.
Or maybe,
just maybe,
a staff to break open our Red Sea so we can walk on further.
But see how far we have come.
A pilgrimage we never thought we would ever walk.
To stop the pillage of a kingdom,
to see the peace that was promised on this land.
The peace that passed us by without understanding
that silence and comfort had long taken hold.
How were we to know that we were drowning?
Let the shepherd make dry ground of our Red Sea
and lead us away from the slavery.
In that new kingdom who will we be?
I can almost feel the excitement coursing through my veins.
A new kingdom, a new hope. A new course to take.
A new voice that comes at choice to speak with conviction without being convicted.
Oh, I can almost see the hope in the horizon.
But walk this desert sand for now.
We will get there soon.
Yes,
the enemy may try to make an example of you, it’s true.
But don’t you see?
Freedom for the kingdom awaits.
And when we get there,
I hope to see you there too.
(Applause)
Our hearts beat like bongo drums,
creating rhythms that ripple across valleys and even oceans’ blue.
This is not like falling in love, but it too was brand new.
And you jive and now step where we once wept, so we cry tears of joy.
Tears in our eyes as sweet as strawberries dunked in cream.
As tender as shea butter
dripping off lips which sing songs of love and unity,
songs of joy for our motherland, for this Africa that is newly dawning.
Our hopes become new every morning. Our feet stop you.
Beats in the soil we once toiled. One stomp in protest.
Two more in celebration of culture and tradition.
The souls of our ancestors are painted in our skin.
Black, white, yellow and olive too. I said black, white, yellow and olive too.
Different levels of melanin clashing and blending into wonderful hues,
swirling into rainbows, reminding you and me
to color our thoughts and our African beauty.
Oh,
how beautiful it would be if our steps were ordered
by the full intensity of our true African identity.
For we are modern Africans after all.
The cradle of all human life.
Survivors of a colonial past.
And the curators of a new African story,
one that's worth being told with each step and sway,
led by the drums and strums of heartstrings of those who came before us.
Hear our hearts racing, mounting Mount Kilimanjaro before Victoria,
falling majestically, washing over these supposedly dry bones,
which is us telling the world that we have been made brand new.
Our faces wear a different hue,
they smile in yellows and pinks and sunset views.
The world better watch out.
Look up, Africa is rising and not from nothing.
For we are more than just the colonial past which is shackled to our legs.
But from great stories of old.
Like
can you think of the cry of Kwame Nkrumah calling us to unite?
Who can forget the military prowess of Queen Njinga of Angola
or Queen Labotsibeni too? These leaders who led with African mind,
whose stories possess the power to transcend time. And I implore you.
Sit.
Listen.
Understand the stories that we were birthed from.
Let them guide your feet, lest they stray too far west.
Let them make the Africa you see more beautiful.
And the path you lead
more meaningful.
Bongo drums.
(Speaks a foreign language)
(Applause)