man-up

May 16, 2019 by Leave a Comment

man-up

It is said
about men
that they 
have it

The balls

that fascist ruler-past
out in Brexit country
she had it they say

The balls

we hear now
that she can
our Caster Semenya

she can
man-up
and race
against men

she still 
facing a testing time
in a world insensitive 
to anything unlike

(a strong girl she is
post-Saartjie Baartman
post-apartheid’s pencil test
and virginity testing too)

man-up
they say
those folks

are they men
one and all

those folks
who run 
athletics

man-up
they say

not yet
Uhuru

 

(Photo Credit: Athletics Weekly)

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We see remarkable women

April 22, 2019 by Leave a Comment

 

The team at Early Childhood Development Centre, Cape Town

We see remarkable women

We see remarkable women
says Professor Eric Atmore 
Stellenbosch University graduate
and he who puts children first

We see remarkable women
every day working with
young children and living
the Mandela legacy

they do it for long hours
with shockingly low pay
they do it for nation building

We see remarkable women
yet they are few and far between
up the poles where politicians are
plying their trade

We see remarkable women
says Professor Eric Atmore 
revealing that less than a third
of children under 7 in South Africa
get quality pre-school learning

(only 30% of our 7 million children
under the age of 7 are in
a quality learning programme)

he tells us too that we need
a policy champion (in cabinet)
as the state does not have 
the political will capacity 
or money to support
its early childhood development programme

We see remarkable women
Now don’t you

We see remarkable women
Now what are you going to do

We see remarkable women
Now what is to be done

“Policies need proper backing, prof says” (Tatler April 11 2019)

(Photo Credit: Southern Suburbs Tatler)

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Just like

April 3, 2019 by Leave a Comment

Just like

Just like
a dictator-past
(apartheid-military style)
finger erect

finger erect
(a Freudian slippage)
taking the moral
high on power

previously she warned
beware the elderly
a political hack competing
foot-in-mouth with others 
in election-time

no doubt she’ll say
no journalist here was
tortured or murdered (yet)
as we’ve seen recently
out at the Saudi consulate

finger erect
it can lose you votes
you might need greatly
in the hawking season

beware little children
as you grow up
to the age of voting
and thinking first

finger erect
journalists still
under attack
be warned 

Just like

The ruling class shows its class. Renowned Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi was murdered some months ago. And, you remember “We don’t listen to old people like Tutu – Duarte”, Cape Argus April 23 2009; Jessie Duarte, then ruling party spokeswoman, putting her foot in it.

 

(Photo Credit: JacarandaFM)

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What are you worth (children of Valhalla Park)

December 28, 2018 by Leave a Comment

What are you worth (children of Valhalla Park)

Valhalla – the palace of immortality
in Scandinavian mythology –
where rests souls of heroes slain
and there are statues and the like 
to the memory of illustrious individuals

What are you worth
children of Valhalla Park 
(might some even say
children of a lesser)

I know folks out there 
a computer literate mother 
of many offspring who 
I’ve not seen for a while

(how might they be
are they on the straight
and the narrow path
are they safe there)

What are you worth
children of Valhalla Park 
and the immediate surrounds
of your fertile growing minds

Are you worth more
or less than the biologically 
blue-eyed and blonde souls
wherever they find themselves

Are you worth more
than your counterparts
in the Palestines Yemens Syrias
of our globalized earth-ghetto

(what of the girl-child
forever at the bottom 
of the feeding queue
voting fodder cannon fodder
for politicians and spokesmen)

What are you worth
children of Valhalla Park 

What are you worth children 
anywhere and everywhere

Penned after a social media condemnation of the recent slaying of children in the area.

 

(Photo Credit: Voice of the Cape)

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I cried

October 30, 2018 by 1 Comment

 

I cried

I cried watching
John Lennon
doing Imagine
on a white piano

I cried during
Missing
the movie of Allende’s Chile
crushed by imperialism
(of the America type)

I cried and cheered
at the end
of the Buena Vista Social Club
because of the socialist struggles
of Cuba and its people

I cried reading
Robert Tressell’s
The Ragged Trousered
Philanthropists

(dad told a tale
back in the old days
of buying and distributing
copies to workers)

(the book a present in 1963
from mom’s older brother
John and his wife Fawzia
the two fleeing through Africa
to England in the period
teachers were being silenced)

I cried
(just now)
on unearthing another
revolutionary treatise
Rape of the Fair Country
with my teacher-activist mom’s
initials in it and the date 2/3/1959

(living in Claremont still
and I guess she expectant
with my brother Mike)

the last lines are rather prophetic

‘For ages deep wrongs have been hopelessly bourne;
Despair shall no longer our spirits dismay,
Not wither the arm when upraised for the fray;
The conflict for freedom is gathering nigh,
We live to secure it, or gloriously die!’

 

(Photo Credit: Carys Ink)
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people like you

October 9, 2018 by Leave a Comment

people like you

there are mouths
quite wide open
at this statement
on early eve TV

In our country
we rape
people like you

this said somewhere
to a young woman
in a relationship
with another

not another
pointy-eared
sharp-tailed alien
from Planet Other

the same Planet
colouring people
with bigotry hatred
and intolerance

or is it brewed
right here
on Planet Earth

that self-same
where we pollute
and carry on as if
we have another

In our country
we rape
people like you

Reference is made
to our rights enshrined
in the Constitution here

perchance our Constitution
is ahead of its citizenry
and its self too

for people
like you
and I

We remember Eudy Simelane

 

(Photo Credit: IOL)

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In (the) front (of the crowd)

April 3, 2018 by 1 Comment

In (the) front (of the crowd)

In the front of the crowd
she was
when #FeesMustFall
hit our campuses
notes a Durban student

not in the margins
was she
says a civil rights leader
out the US way

Winnie Madikizela-Mandela
labelled Mother of the Nation
by the everyday
(though apartheid denied her
mothering her own children)

a terrorist in the state’s eyes
and those who benefitted
from the collusions of apartheid

(tortured jailed banished
she kept the flame of freedom
alive during the dark days)

In the front of the crowd
uninvited a unionist jokes
she would just arrive

a journalist says people
have forgotten the past
and have no idea how
apartheid brutalized her

(and the post-traumatic
stress she and everyone
suffered and simply
carried on)

In the front of the crowd
not a spare rib
not an appendage
a person in her own

Winnie Madikizela-Mandela

Not yet Uhuru

(Photo Credit 1: Mail & Guardian) (Photo Credit 2: Wikimedia)

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Things fall(ing) apart

December 11, 2017 by Leave a Comment

Things fall(ing) apart

It can only happen
where there are
no Bikos or Chés
no Harons Sobukwes
Timols or Mandelas even

It can only happen (here)
down South where women
and children are abused
ritually regardless

Out Heideveld way
where chess is in
at the local library
and a chess competition
acclaims young minds

Out Heideveld way
where some celebrate
their title deeds whilst
others decry and deny
the charges of the usual
corruption and incompetence

Houses falling apart
a metaphor for all
that is dark out there
on the Cape Flats
(where the city works)

Houses falling apart
out in Africa in the
Third World in the
undeveloped and
underdeveloped
end of our polluted planet

Houses for All was
once a slogan

now it is
Houses falling apart

Houses ‘falling apart’ (Athlone News, December 6 2017)

 

(Photo Credit: HouseIt)

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That is not right

October 27, 2017 by Leave a Comment

Chanelle McCrawl

That is not right

A paternal grandfather
can’t get much sleep
as yet another
young one is killed

(she thrown on a field
like a piece of garbage)

That is not right
she is a human being

(a local library colleague
wonders whether children
are growing up too quickly)

elsewhere a besuited one
declares that gangs
are using weapons
of war

blustering on about
never failing our people
and liberating our people
from prisons of fear

is the mind not
that dangerous place
that weapon of war

male suspects appear
and are charged
while we fill that
other concrete prison

then tick off boxes
for political statisticians
and the statistics
of politicians

Is that right

“Another girl killed, another tenant held” (Cape Times, October 24 2017), “Charnelle’s mom shares her grief” (Argus, October 24 2017), “Another child found dead” (Athlone News, October 25 2017), and “Gangs using ‘weapons of war’” (Athlone News, October 18 2017).

(Photo Credit: David Ritchie / ANA / Cape Argus)

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Gentle Justice

August 11, 2017 by Leave a Comment

 

Gentle Justice

justice
awaits
victims wait
for some

whilst Special Ones
and the blindly faithful
get their way
and get away

Gentle Justice
an escape
from the glare
of the public

Gentle Justice
is what you get
when you are

well-known
well-resourced
well-connected
(pockets well-lined too)

(this in spite of our
Constitution lauded
and our Bill of Rights
and the like
on paper)

Gentle Justice
a higher-up gets
during Women’s Month

his just reward
for knowing
his place

(no shoot first or
fight fire
with fire)

justice awaits
and victims wait

A legal NGO’s spokesperson on morning SAFM radio has it that our Rainbow Nation’s night-clubbing higher-up deputy-male has gotten himself “gentle justice”.

(Photo Credit: Joseph Chirume / GroundUp)

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