Featured Poem:
I stand between my Africa and me
Enlarge poem
Featured Poem:
I stand between my Africa and me
I once did an interview and the headline read ‘Botswana born beauty’,
Pride beamed inside me despite the fact that I was born in Durban actually, but lets overlook that, it’s just a slight technicality.
I can feel I’m at home as soon as I’ve crossed Tlokweng border posts and I’m welcomed by the nasal Dumelang of a lazy customs official
Thinking of it now, I miss home. I don’t go back often though, only on special occasions, this time stamped as a South African citizen.
You know what I’ve always thought as I’m filling out forms, it’s a pity they don’t have SADC as a nationality,
It would certainly make my life easy.
With my half Ndebele aunts and uncles I’d just write “from all of the above” next to Country of Origin.
My life would be simple
I wouldn’t have to launch into a recited summary of my personal history when asked, so where are you from?
Oh no, my mom, Zulu-born went into exile and married a Motswana man my dad,11 years and three kids later they divorced. We came back, got S.A. passports, and had to transform,
Issues of identity became blessings of diversity, interesting stories and a collage of poetic childhood memories.
I remember the dust rising streets of scorching hot Gaborone, we grew up catching raindrops in orange plastic jugs,
Our tiny feet would thomp heavily on the ground in a rain dance, not just for fun but necessity,
Seriously, we were so thirsty, two savannahs short of a drought. Yes that’s how I’d describe my home city
But we survived and felt vibrantly alive in my desert home that I deserted a long time ago
The Motswana in me comes through in my laid back sticky pap and morogo attitude ga oka mpona ke rapame mo stoeping oseka wantshwenya thlemma kea ithetsa as batswana do,
Mangifuna kodwa nginga khuluma isizulu and that is respectfully due to umama’s bedtime stories which she beat into our hearts like a steady drum, always ending too soon in ncos ncos yaphela, we were still too young to see that she preserved our mother tongue
I have ancestors all over the show.
bloodlines spilling across borderposts.
I have a cousin Mazuba from Zambia,
That didn’t prevent blood wars fought with family members right next door in Zimbabwe,
There’s more, I even have heritage in Kenya apparently!
It’s funny a friend once told me, after we had just met, her name is Awino, she smiled and said,
You know Mbali, you have the pride and nature of a Luo, She told me that Mbali isn’t a flower it means ‘far’ in Swahili. It moved me in a way I can’t explain because far is how I feel
I am running so hard cutting across geographical invisible lines to stay safe inside the right one, i.e the one that’s convenient at the time
I the nouveau African, I wear dresses handmade and mailed by a friend from Mali,
I deshell prawns with my Mozambican friends as we engage in debate about third world poverty
I say bonjour ca va to parking guards, laugh and ask will they vote Kabila if they can get back to the DRC?
In the meantime I’m calculating where to say I’m from, to whom, to seem closer to them to feel more African, without being too true about my family lineage,
Turns out my gogo is from the wrong type of Zimbo, so I hide that, and emphasise my new found Eritrean friend.
playing it easy meanwhile I’m seriously worried, the thought running through my mind is like, what if I end up dating some guy from Nigeria
I am Xenophobia…
I am Africa not African condemning instead of celebrating my diversity. I am the new face of Africa, cutting my nose to spite my face. I am the Hutu calling myself Tutsi in conflict with my shared heritage, instead of opening my eyes and seeing that I am self colonized
In my African fantasy I stand in the shade of a Baobab tree its smell seeps through the black and protrudes through the juice of a Marula perfectly.
Only thing wrong with this picture is that no one speaks ‘African’ in the restaurants I frequent, this new found revolution is recent.
Truth is, the who I am, is a Cape Town city girl consuming what is termed the coca cola culture. You can feel it, it’s in the long street fever where we merge on a level where we can all relate because we’ve all bought shares in this new South Africa
We’re part of a culture that sells that all is well. We have mixed race International friends but that cosmo city ends in the CBD. Fifteen minutes out of town there’s a war going on. didn’t you read the headlines of the murdered Somailians. Africans killing each other what, what next? Come on, it’s ridiculous. We don’t’ need xenophobia, what, with race, class, issues and HIV we can sustain our hate for each other for at least another century.
It’s a fear of what we don’t understand mentality it has to stop!
Go back home you Refugee, because we choose to forget a time when we too weren’t free,
We are shouting makwere kwere take our jobs, because we have millions unemployed,
It’s the foreigners who sell drugs, because we need to blame others for what we have destroyed
Me included, I am struggling to choose sides because I want to be seen in my stoned cherry outfit as the one of us of the African renaissance
Shouting proudly African silently, because I don’t want to be teased that I’m from upper campus. Running, panting, ten years later after pass laws holding my green ID book up.
I want to stop, pause, sink my bare feet into red African soil. Trace my blood line with my big toe, create a map no matter how far back, of my people, and find my roots so I can stand.
Dream of an Africa I claim as mine, I will fight for this continent with fierce pride because it is only I that stands between my Africa and me.
I once did an interview and the headline read ‘Botswana born beauty’,
Pride beamed inside me despite the fact that I was born in Durban actually, but lets overlook that, it’s just a slight technicality.
I can feel I’m at home as soon as I’ve crossed Tlokweng border posts and I’m welcomed by the nasal Dumelang of a lazy customs official
Thinking of it now, I miss home. I don’t go back often though, only on special occasions, this time stamped as a South African citizen.
You know what I’ve always thought as I’m filling out forms, it’s a pity they don’t have SADC as a nationality,
It would certainly make my life easy.
With my half Ndebele aunts and uncles I’d just write “from all of the above” next to Country of Origin.
My life would be simple
I wouldn’t have to launch into a recited summary of my personal history when asked, so where are you from?
Oh no, my mom, Zulu-born went into exile and married a Motswana man my dad,11 years and three kids later they divorced. We came back, got S.A. passports, and had to transform,
Issues of identity became blessings of diversity, interesting stories and a collage of poetic childhood memories.
I remember the dust rising streets of scorching hot Gaborone, we grew up catching raindrops in orange plastic jugs,
Our tiny feet would thomp heavily on the ground in a rain dance, not just for fun but necessity,
Seriously, we were so thirsty, two savannahs short of a drought. Yes that’s how I’d describe my home city
But we survived and felt vibrantly alive in my desert home that I deserted a long time ago
The Motswana in me comes through in my laid back sticky pap and morogo attitude ga oka mpona ke rapame mo stoeping oseka wantshwenya thlemma kea ithetsa as batswana do,
Mangifuna kodwa nginga khuluma isizulu and that is respectfully due to umama’s bedtime stories which she beat into our hearts like a steady drum, always ending too soon in ncos ncos yaphela, we were still too young to see that she preserved our mother tongue
I have ancestors all over the show.
bloodlines spilling across borderposts.
I have a cousin Mazuba from Zambia,
That didn’t prevent blood wars fought with family members right next door in Zimbabwe,
There’s more, I even have heritage in Kenya apparently!
It’s funny a friend once told me, after we had just met, her name is Awino, she smiled and said,
You know Mbali, you have the pride and nature of a Luo, She told me that Mbali isn’t a flower it means ‘far’ in Swahili. It moved me in a way I can’t explain because far is how I feel
I am running so hard cutting across geographical invisible lines to stay safe inside the right one, i.e the one that’s convenient at the time
I the nouveau African, I wear dresses handmade and mailed by a friend from Mali,
I deshell prawns with my Mozambican friends as we engage in debate about third world poverty
I say bonjour ca va to parking guards, laugh and ask will they vote Kabila if they can get back to the DRC?
In the meantime I’m calculating where to say I’m from, to whom, to seem closer to them to feel more African, without being too true about my family lineage,
Turns out my gogo is from the wrong type of Zimbo, so I hide that, and emphasise my new found Eritrean friend.
playing it easy meanwhile I’m seriously worried, the thought running through my mind is like, what if I end up dating some guy from Nigeria
I am Xenophobia…
I am Africa not African condemning instead of celebrating my diversity. I am the new face of Africa, cutting my nose to spite my face. I am the Hutu calling myself Tutsi in conflict with my shared heritage, instead of opening my eyes and seeing that I am self colonized
In my African fantasy I stand in the shade of a Baobab tree its smell seeps through the black and protrudes through the juice of a Marula perfectly.
Only thing wrong with this picture is that no one speaks ‘African’ in the restaurants I frequent, this new found revolution is recent.
Truth is, the who I am, is a Cape Town city girl consuming what is termed the coca cola culture. You can feel it, it’s in the long street fever where we merge on a level where we can all relate because we’ve all bought shares in this new South Africa
We’re part of a culture that sells that all is well. We have mixed race International friends but that cosmo city ends in the CBD. Fifteen minutes out of town there’s a war going on. didn’t you read the headlines of the murdered Somailians. Africans killing each other what, what next? Come on, it’s ridiculous. We don’t’ need xenophobia, what, with race, class, issues and HIV we can sustain our hate for each other for at least another century.
It’s a fear of what we don’t understand mentality it has to stop!
Go back home you Refugee, because we choose to forget a time when we too weren’t free,
We are shouting makwere kwere take our jobs, because we have millions unemployed,
It’s the foreigners who sell drugs, because we need to blame others for what we have destroyed
Me included, I am struggling to choose sides because I want to be seen in my stoned cherry outfit as the one of us of the African renaissance
Shouting proudly African silently, because I don’t want to be teased that I’m from upper campus. Running, panting, ten years later after pass laws holding my green ID book up.
I want to stop, pause, sink my bare feet into red African soil. Trace my blood line with my big toe, create a map no matter how far back, of my people, and find my roots so I can stand.
Dream of an Africa I claim as mine, I will fight for this continent with fierce pride because it is only I that stands between my Africa and me.
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VERY PROUD OF YOU!!!!! YOU ARE POETRY
Here I sit in Sydney, Australia listening to this amazing piece of African poetry. Inspirational young poet, your reading was so inspiring, I will seek out more.
It’s very impressive your consciousness of an African identity, that goes Beyond nation, state and race.
Good poetry!
Amazing! good job!
Poignant and thought provoking! Well done Kgosi!