Moments, Not Monuments: Remembering the Freedom Struggle

Statues and some faded pictures repatriation and reburial of bones cold war Soviet tanks and the AK-47 all that remains of the Freedom Struggle giants who drove the colonizers back to their cradles talked to the spirits of the ancestors There is an invisible force of cartel members so big they turned against their own people so big they lurked behind anthills so big with clever fingers who had no machinery and dug dungeons in Angola's unforgiving terrain killers of freedom they couldn't compete with the Freedom Struggle icons who came from the heartland's extremities Post-independence people born-free generation executives of neo-colonialism special advisors tender-preneurs Chinese settlers (they have never imagined us in their future) how could we imagine them in the past marooned in exile many years ago with bitter tears streaming down our faces? The Freedom Struggle is presumed dead. Sirens blare. A moment of silence stretches into years. Tomorrow is Independence Day But no one remembers what to commemorate. What rare anthology of freedom sits till tomorrow in the contaminated air where we talk now, armed with our indiscriminate hate there on Heroes Acre and obvious side of right?