Give Peace a Chance Part 2

Yet Africa is expected to fall in line With speed and alacrity Or be headed back to Europe For much deserved censure And sanitization in the heart Of brutish Europe! Have we not seen them in action At Treblinka and Auschwitz, brother With their atomic bombs in Hiroshima With their weapons of mass destruction With their napalm in Vietnam, Vietcong With their sjamboks in apartheid South Africa I plead not for impunity, a term recently coined For Africa, but not for Syria, or Korea, or Iran I plead not for that, no, I plead for my country For I can see a finger I distrust pointing at us And I know it is time for the neo-colonialists And their myopic followers to hit the road To proclaim once again that they have come To pacify and civilize the savages of Africa Africa must know that the Sword of Damocles Has never hung so close to the African head As in this day and age of African impunity! Knowing full well that that is the biggest lie Who was it that caused Africa to adopt Dictatorship or a clone of dictatorship Shortly after national independence In the second half of the 20th century Oh, that is history now, forget that. Was the Cold War a creation of Africa? Was communism the brain-child of Africa? Were these disputed borders created by us? Why then do we bear the brunt of your wrath? Understand me my brother or at least try to For this pot has been simmering since dawn It is now well past its time to retire and rest Why, they ask, should Nairobi boast a skyline That has not even a single colonial-day edifice Having been dwarfed by modern skyscrapers Kenya cannot be allowed to be a beacon, no They have done enough damage to our claim That nothing good can come out of Africa! Having painted all Africans with one brush They now seek to justify that misconception For they can claim that South Africa is special Anything north of the Limpopo is in shambles And must needs European talent and wisdom And control, control and more control, brother And having recruited sycophantic followers To sing and dance to blind impunity songs They, like the greedy mouse, will hear no cat Is it now a crime to change one’s mind? When Kenyans said yes to The Hague Did they know that the warring people Would embrace peace, bury the hatchet And vote together in peaceful elections? Did they know that sense would prevail And banish anger and retributive clamour? What is in it for the international community If internal and regional peace are anathema? What is in it for Kenya if we win the battle And lose the war- the long term war we crave Is it not the wish of Kenyans to live in peace Is it not the wish of Kenyans to embrace each And every community as brothers and sisters In the new dispensation that we have created? Who is this then that is urging us to harden our hearts Who is it that is hell bent on re-sowing seeds of hatred? Who is this that is courting disaster in the name of justice? Who is this that wants us to believe that the community The region, the country, the nation is now subordinate To the individual and if the country burn in the process So be it, so be it, so be it, so be it. You are lost, my brother? We lost so many; we cannot afford to rock the boat again! It was a war that we ineptly got ourselves into, my brother It was Kenya’s moment of shame. But it was also Kenya’s Moment of renewal, rebirth. Such moments are painful! Give Peace A Chance In Kenya, too, Ban Ki Moon and All those wise men and women who know what it means!