Date Archives July 2024

Imagine my surprise when I learned,
Gothenburg was pronounced Yothe-bury, a different name.
How can you let us get away with mispronouncing this place?

She smiled, awkwardly I guess,
never considering Swedish words,
were anglicised the world over.
There was so much we presumed about those relegated to Viking and their serfs.

What we don’t see are the pillars, windows, walls of love,
built to serve the people across class.
The housing projects that match earth’s slopes,
including libraries, pools, forests and open lawns, making bulk brick or concrete estates a laugh.

Every road has pavements and bicycle lanes,
private property, whether walled in or fenced off,
is kept minimal by roaming rights.
We should be able to enjoy the land and beaches, a fine sight.

Sweden’s people, their elected reps,
largely control the sale of alcohol, thank goodness.
It’s illegal to carry guns on the street,
including knives or weaponised scissors.

The state regulates rental prices in public housing and private property,
making sure people have access to affordable housing,
everyone should be able to live,
to resist a money-making suffocate, round ring.

Most schools are public, municipal run,
not the for-profit private institutes at every turn.
Here again, this is to ensure all children, irrespective of class,
enjoy fairly equitable roots as they learn.

Did you know, school aftercare is managed by the state,
while schooling is free, aftercare comes at an expense,
but if you’re poor, your cost is equal to your family income, verified of course,
if you’re rich, your cost is limited, which makes fair, good sense.

Olof challenged sex and gender inhibitions,
suggesting democratic rights should be enjoyed by all.
He supported worker unions,
and questioned the geopolitical domination that enthralls.

The architecture was built a long, long time ago,
and while cracks, shifts, anger and hurt over governance,
rises up in waves from the working and middle class,
what is clear is that the impetus to serve was there, a fight against ruling class stubbornness.

A house was built to serve an entire country,
not a single Swede understands engineered economic mass exclusion and exploitation,
when 90% of your country is deliberately undermined, exploited and brutalised,
how can they fully appreciate the impact of South African pillars that serve some over many, the dominance of self-absorbed ruminations.

The flying critics that spread their wings are woefully misled,
while the criticisms of South African governance are true,
their substance however diverges from a total review of systems, control, processes and influence,
that see domestic and foreign holdings, an expansion exacerbating gross inequities anew.

If Sverige’s architecture were different,
if a false love was built and shaped to serve indecent minority enrichment,
ABBA’s country might have been another South Africa, smaller but similarly divided,
a working class much alike and equally, vociferously astringent.

So bless the pillars of love,
the windows, walls, stairs and doorways that were built.
Take heart in knowing Sweden, that once a ruling class cared enough,
to build a house that serves all fairly equitably, accessibly, a real home.

I am not Indian.
Be sure, I will resist the forcing of your disguise,
the one on your face,
your ethnic or religious claims,
an obvious mask for the old gross concept of race.

I am not Indian.
My skin may be brown, my hair is black.
I have never been to the country you speak of.
My great-great-grandparents knew their way around,
but I am not them—a people I never met, I no longer desire to mimic their lost love.

I am not Indian,
not Bangladeshi, Pakistani,
nor Sri Lankan or Nepali,
I get that colours across states can seem the same,
but I refute this obsession with ancestral origin, pretending I am a jolly Bolly.

I am not Indian,
racially, religiously,
physically, by tax payments or sound,
I hold no greater claim to a country,
when my centuries of strangeness to the land is well-found.
And so, this word diaspora only counts,
if I called India mom.
My humid mother ate magwinyas for lunch,
so where is this diaspora theory coming from?

In what way is diaspora being used,
to rank human beings into deserving and less so.
Must I pour my grief onto Muslim or Christian Indians,
suggesting Hindu roots,
makes me more human, more acceptable.

Must I allow nebulous race,
peeking through ethnic, religious, colour claims,
propping up policies and processes that exclude,
or undermine some, while guaranteeing me an easier race.

Listen, I am not Indian,
I don’t cling to racial loyalties that hide behind ethnicity, religion or colour.
Every life matters.
Every power abuse, structural or incidental, requires I dig deep into knowledge.

I am not Indian,
yet, I reserve the freedom to criticise Indian policy as much as I please,
the policies and practices of any country.
I am done with this ethnic race colour fixation, amongst the springboks I paid my fees.

Do you get it? I am not Indian,
my husband is not European or politically white,
our son sure ain’t Anglo-Indian, coloured or mulatto,
this weird constant snacking on man-made race bites.

Hyper-generalising culture,
racialising religion and look-and-sound-a-likes,
in Tunisia, India, across Africa, Europe and Arab slave households,
please, keep my family out of this long dark night.

I am not Indian.
Yes, I celebrate Diwali, eating food with my hand like a pro.
My husband, who you seek to separate from me,
can eat hot food too and knows more Durban slang than any Indian would,
I won’t have these lines drawn between us, for me this is a no-go.

I am not Indian.
If you’re afraid of skin or accents,
worried about difference, an overpowering threat.
Please, first engage with how and why race matters to you,
We can’t be—shouldn’t be—responsible for your international, national inner discontent.

I am not Indian,
My son is not Asian,
he is not criminal or corrupt.
Loneliness, boisterousness, temper flares are human,
let’s keep that in mind before we assume or interrupt.

I am not Indian,
I was born an African woman,
let’s stop pretending racist, sexist ideas are rare and stay at home,
when last year’s economic minister suggested abortions for African women, his Suomi voters surely saw this as a win.

This man with his peers,
holding the quill, determining my likened fate,
only when he was publicly caught,
ignoring what racist idea means, he said he made an immature mistake.

But it wasn’t a mistake, was it?
He is not intellectually disabled or fresh out of a time machine,
the policies of the 1930s, 1960s,
like danmark’s sterilisations in green lands is what he says should be real.

And if your only formula for economic success,
is exploitation and cruelty in suits,
the old favourite remixed when innovation and neoliberalism should be reviewed,
then the world is in big trouble, severe indifference will turn into philosophical brutes.

When stateless migrants are funnelled,
through ’23’s E-and-U agreements,
costing hundreds of millions, money flushed down like poo-poo,
to struggling or opportunistic African states,
good people are selling human bodies, while complaining about population age in their citizen review.
Focussed on white women’s birth and fertility rates,
how frightening,
when the people in charge say they’re managing incoming threats,
while ignoring the mass grave of migrants in the same countries they call enlightening.

What they do to others, they can do to you,
if the time comes and the seething masses point to your bus.
Will it matter whether you paid your taxes, said please and thank you,
forcing you to find shelter with nothing but your clothes, you too will stand nonplussed.

And the people who voted for this,
will pretend that they didn’t see the ugliness coming,
that migration, crime and economic suffering,
was why toward suited swastikas they went running.

But the truth is and was,
they knew, just like they did in the 1930s,
they knew enough but chose indifference,
hoping to benefit from whatever was done to claw back prosperous streets.

I am not Indian,
but I understand more than most the tram ride between fear and race,
I grew up breathing in toxic fumes,
born to a normal that was a neo-Nazi capitalist state.
If I can offer any advice, let me say this,
fear is human, there’s no shame in anger or worry,
but ideas birth emotions, it’s important you interrogate, your biggest threat isn’t curry.

Let’s talk about financial markets, dependence on economies,
tell me how you hold business accountable, prevent geopolitical wars.
What success could your climate change migration plans have,
if you’re excluding, undermining, bringing weapons and death to other countries’ shores.

I am not Indian, friend,
Like you, I am human, nothing less or more.
Sleeping soundly is harder these days, this could happen to me,
if we were the many desperate, destitute or just plain poor.

Switch off these endless, droning docu-volumes,
that bask in the everyday butcher knife,
of the breeding, killing, sleeping, bleeding,
the every day of our African wildlife.

Turn away from episodes on social mediums,
that beg for audience justification,
of advertising sponsors,
offering oblique African revelations,
devoid of historical, political context,
or economic critical analysis,
ignoring geopolitical ripples,
and how it’s left African countries on dialysis.
These critics, black, brown or white,
who tell the world of Africa’s bleak culture,
an inhuman, backwards, primitive set of values,
lazily disconnecting systems, processes, practices and policies, their voices often dulcour.

No, please sit alone,
in the African sun or under her night sky,
and ask yourself,
for once, ask why,
Africa does not have its own streaming service,
a world news, entertainment and docu-series giant,
that covers world best teacher and principal awards,
innovations from everyday items,
like building bricks from plastic forms,
exposing Africa’s child and the world,
to playwrights, mathematicians, architects,
engineers and singers,
a love for self, a voice that is yours being kindled.

Show me a blockbuster movie on |Xam history,
their loves, their southern African life,
juxtaposing this with their ruminations or current fights.

Show me a modern take, animated or live action,
of imaginative African lore,
Mawu-Lisa, Moon and Sun twins of Benin,
or Sango the thunder god, perhaps he knew Thor?

Tell me a story about days old,
the Mapungubwe traders or kings, an old world coming to life,
enflame our hearts by building a new song,
we deserve to refocus our minds.

Give me a book series of a teen superhero,
KwaMashu born, Section K,
son of a construction worker who solves local mysteries,
saving the day, with his own Aunt May.

Show me love and pain, joy and sorrow,
show me rage and peace, success and failure,
in every colour, every African thread,
our humanity to be seen, full and equal, don’t be a vailer.

You think it doesn’t matter,
you think you don’t care, get in the ring,
you’re playing catch-up, dark babe,
in a world that’s determined to only make money from your earth, your skin.

Don’t believe me? Search for stories about African elephants,
every beagle and Alaskan malamute,
will flood your brain waves on this mammal’s life and plight,
without mentioning the descendants of African ways, the people of note.
And so, Africa cannot rely on friendly others to tell their story.
Her children must rise to do it themselves.
Business, political, civil society might,
must lift up the unseen and unheard from the shelves.

Look abroad,
countries don’t prioritise English, French or Portuguese,
over their home-grown tongue,
it makes no sense if that’s a secondary dialect of ease.
So why can’t Africans have municipal libraries and docu-series in Zulu or Igbo,
Swahili or Pedi,
why can’t company press releases be in Kituba,
who said we can’t change how we are fed.

Who says we have to use Sam’s song?
What about an African branded cell phone?
The kind we source, we build, distribute and pay for,
Why would that be wrong?

Sit for a while and dream with me,
our imagination soaring like a black-winged kite.
Consider an Africa dark and free,
instead of being relegated to hunger, exploitation and strife.

Scrutinise the voice,
the one in your head and heart,
a whispering, slithering mamba telling you equal is assimilation,
ignoring the possibility of a fresh, collective start.

You are whoever you see yourself as,
confronting the source of hurt pride,
are you capable, dark and lovely,
or desperate, dark and ugly,
it is up to you, the system, processes and policies you choose will decide.

what are you saying,
through our cities, suburban buildings,
rushing through open windows,
a whistling, howling elder,
telling us to look up and all around.

you, who bends the mighty trees,
rustling their leaves.
you, who blows sand,
against our skin,
in case we begrudge,
our seaside blessings.

you, who shove gusts,
through narrow paths,
pushing us back, reminding us,
how small we are,
how fragile,
wee bodies that can fall apart.

you’re generous too, we must agree,
offering us a cool breeze,
on a walk, cycle or jog.
a refreshment from weariness,
that helps us keep going,
when all we want to do,
is stop.

you sweep fallen leaves across our path,
serving notice,
all things come to an end.
and we must,
each and everyone,
prepare for rebirth,
the chance of a cyclical mend.

what do you want us to see, o’mighty winds,
the wretched encroachment of our modern ways,
across your green hills or brown dunes,
across and within your blue waves.

you whisper and shout,
I hear you inside and out
while here,
blinded by screens.
you call me, you call us,
loud as can be,
to sit with our maker,
in silent reverence,
amongst the holy pollen and weeds.