Brown skin

Brown skin, you’re a majestic garment that clothes 

Wrapping yourself tightly around my body, you enclose

You are so gloriously coloured: 

So bold, so beautiful and so black

Yeah, you are my pride and joy, a power pack

My identity in you is found, 

My struggle and purpose wrapped around

To restore your former glory is my wish

For the glory of the latter house shall be greater

The great Ntsundu ancestor is your vindicator

How have other nations plundered your houses?

Breaking families and coming between spouses

They have stolen your name Great Africa!

Your kings and queens deposed off from their thrones

Our ancestors killed like beasts, we never buried their bones

Brown skin you come from the most sacred of lands

Where man’s origins are traced and the beginning stands

But you my brown skin have not wealth in your hands

From the oceans of the Cape, to the vast Sahara sands

You, Brown skin, are made of ancient genetic strands

What shall become of your future, Brown skin?

Will you rise like Asia, your sister and twin?

Bringing the West down to its knees

Showing that your strength is not only in forgiveness

But in how you will bring back your children’s richness

I urge all those who are blessed with your splendour

Never to any culture or traditions wish to surrender

Like the ancients of old knew gods are all brown skinned

They must use their imagination’s figment 

In order to see the royalty in your Ebony pigment

I call upon the Mount Kilimanjaro where spirits dwell

I summon all the drowned souls in the Nile’s well

I conjure all the ancestral bodies in the Congo Basin

Today, all those who had, and you who have, brown skin

Come and fight all your enemies together and you will win

Brown skin you were my home from birth

You’ll remain so when I go back to mother Gaia in death

-SNLV kaJolinkomo