Freedom Day In South Africa
1.
On the 27th day of April in
Nineteen Ninety-Four,
Freedom was won, at long last.
The battles were many, the foe
brutal,
Apartheid tore our southern tip
of the continent of Africa apart,
it’s notions of racial-superiority,
its religious fundamentalism,
its fascist tendencies,
its beastly nature,
ripped the flesh off the skin of
our collective selves,
but resistance to tyranny has
always been a basic human
aspiration,
and so resistance flourished.
2.
Ordinary folk,
school-teachers and machinists,
nurses and poets,
labourers and engineers,
lawyers and students,
resisted!
We remember you today,
as a copper African sun shines
bright this Saturday morning in
April of Two-Thousand and
Thirteen,
we honour you, who fought,
Comrades all -
Walter Sisulu,
Nelson Mandela,
Joe Slovo,
Ahmed Kathrada,
Bram Fischer,
Steve Biko,
Solomon Mahlangu,
Vuyisile Mini,
Denis Goldberg,
and many many more,
those we know and love,
and those whose bones have
now settled in our rich African
soil,
those who died,
those who were executed,
those who were shot,
those who were tortured,
those who were killed,
and the countless who are still
tortured today by the swords of
memory,
the emotional and psychological
torture,
that still rains down on the
valiant ones and their families.
Families!
Families fractured, broken and
scattered throughout the world,
fragments of a sister’s laugh, a
daughter’s smile,
bite as harshly into the soul as
did Apartheid’s cruel lashes of
violence.
So many died, too many died,
and I remember them,
Steve Biko – Tortured and
Murdered in South Africa
Solomon Mahlangu – Hanged by
the Apartheid State
Ahmed Timol – Tortured and
Murdered
Bram Fischer – Died in Prison
and many many more,
their blood flowing into the soil
of our ancestors,
our country, our South Africa,
for all South Africans,
Black and white and brown and
all the shades of humanity’s
mosaic.
3.
Now we reflect,
now we must dissect,
the fruits of freedom,
thus far,
much has been achieved,
yet,
the struggles continue,
for employment,
health-care for all,
shelter and housing for all,
and my compatriots have
earned it,
they have stewed in the mines,
deep beneath the soil,
for shiny metals and glittering
glass.
The revolution is a work-in-
progress,
true liberation shall be economic
liberation,
where each and every South
African,
can walk the land of our
ancestors,
truly free
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