The Cost of Zambia's Pettifoggery

We are quarreling over a graveyard of great ideas Wandering under skies filled with flying political spears Ideas are rotting under the soils dug by the unscrupulous We buried our true identity and our mourning is pretentious The commoners with good intentions are called riffraffs The undereducated with concerns are labeled bellyachers The elite have a sense of entitlement that exceeds their competency The clergy have cloaks covering hands reaching out for the treasury When Jesus tells us to pray in private, that’s when we fill up stadiums Or that “Lord! Lord!” won’t get us to heaven, we still climb the podiums Our inaction disguised as faith and oblivious to the endowment of freewill We are blind to nature's blessings and God’s delegation of power for us to realise his earthly will Amidst the vastness of our resources, blossoms a narrowness of minds If challenges delay our goals, a compromise sprouts, as success gets undermined Our failures don’t roll up our sleeves for more efforts but for belligerence Our tongues have become viperous easily inciting division and violence We are guilty of killing the messengers We have silenced voices that threaten our favours and status We prefer fellow tribesmen and forego what statesmanship seeks Distrusting progress of shared thought and embracing the selfishness of cliques More deceit continue to deface our identity Take heed of the manipulation of verities Individualism is not selfishness Patriotism is not self-praise Salvation is not prosperity Electability is not authority Our leaders are just a reflection of society Changing the mirror won’t cure their corruptibility