Anti-Afrophobia march and poetry reading

I wrote a poem, Some Black Lives Matter, as far back as the Mbeki era and it is still relevant today in the current climate of Afrophobia.  I included it in My Fellow South Africans and I read it at a rally outside parliament on Saturday 8 March that protested the rise and causes of hatred towards Africans.

Some Black Lives Matter

Hey brother mine

When next you decry those Afro-pessimists

Or reach for your “blame apartheid” card

Or feign victim hurt for what colonialists wrought

Remember the day of March and March

In the month of June

 Activist you

When next you petition me to march

Behind your banner declaring “black lives matter”

Because some African American’s been shot

Remember this day, as I turn and walk away

 And you, you braided Model-C poet

With your naïve Mother Africa poems

Drowning in a river of Congo blood

I vomit at your impotent words

 As for you, taxman

When next you tax me another Madiba statue

Whose “never and never again” echoes hollow

Across this murderous land

I shall be first to tear it down

 You better-lives-for-some

When you have done with your semantic dance of denial

Spare me your empty Ubuntu bullshit

Save me from your social cohesion crap

It is a necklace burning our Zimbabwean

Mozambican

Somalian

Neighbours that speaks for you

 You so-called leaders

Whose sons grow fat on African mines

Whose daughters parade their African art

Whose spouses bedeck your tables with African cloth

While you serve African bodies on skewers of hate

 Here

Take my passport

Its pages are full

They are stamped with shame