My response to "Move on…"

What they hold sacred now I must esteem highly.

What they consider praise now I must sing.

And they call this equality, inclusion and transformation.

Nouns whose very significance I find meaningless.

Their essence, I notice in retrospect, is hollow.

Two decades and no one has taken responsibility of the atrocity.

It is us the victims who bared the brunt and pay the price.

Merrily their children get along with life,

With no need to be confronted with the past

And lack urgency to fix what they know their fathers broke.

Yes it us who are haunted by memories of bestial treatment.

It is the world around us that refuses to change.

We are told this but experience that, how is that still the case?

They sing a chorus: “Apartheid is over move on!”

For this reason they cannot understand why we are fallists.

So this I say “Move on”, strip the blinkers your fathers put on you

Don’t you notice that South Africa is a nation divided into two?

One of privilege and international power; one of poverty and perpetual servitude

“Move on” from your privilege and see how we are confronted by the shadow of the past

While YOU are faced with the deep sense of loss of the “good old days”

Let’s get this clear, our land is called what your forebears chose to call it

Streets bear names of men who killed our fathers and brothers

Corners are filled with statues of men who raped our mothers and sisters

Books tell us illustriously stories that we remember as nightmares

“You have no need to be afraid” Have you seen how I live, I am terrified

We are faced with two worlds in eternal conflict

Townships which would have any risk inspector shout “Evacuate immediately!”

And places of work, or learning, that are a taste of heaven on … … … Afrika

Have you consider that perhaps we cannot fully assimilate to your system

Because you have created these two conflicting worlds and forced us to live in them?

 “Move on” from your segregationalist thinking, the one you use when it suits you

Modernism, Universality and Globalisation are inevitable when they are agreeable

Multi-culturalism, multi-racism and multi-linguism you loathe when they don’t favour you

You are exposed, for the rear that you are, and the contradictions of this volatile system

You stand up swiftly against radical blacks but stand still when you see racist whites

“Move on” from your entitlement and remember you owe us

For the stolen land, forced labour, plundered riches and denied entrepreneurial opportunity

The bail out you received from the apartheid government was paid by me

From my trust fund, that my parents would have set up had they been given the chance

The education you received was subsides by my tea-girl grandmother’s wages

“Move on” from thinking everything is about you

You are nothing but a small fraction of the population

If you were truly African you would concern yourself with African matters

Instead again you reveal your identity by defending western ideologies

You are a walking irony, one with no identity even though you worship individuality

So here is what I say to you: no more will I revere your arrogance

Your art is a crime scene, a site of complicity and proof of your hate

Your knowledge is evidence of your limited ability to think beyond yourself

Your songs are nothing but meaningless notes full of vile rhymes,

At least to me.  So no longer will I entertain or be entertained by them

I intend to destroy all that you used to hurt me, all systems of privilege

I am a destructionist and a reconstructionist, in this I have expertise

I have perfectly implemented this policy, cauterising lies and decrypting truths

From your knowledge systems (are they?) and rebuilt myself from the ashes

Remember the words of Human: Your ideas will die as you live and mine will live as I die