Slavery and Reparations All Done
SLAVERY AND REPARATIONS
I am a descendant of slaves - from India!
Anyone who demands REPARATIONS shake & quake at my words
Competition? So, we have competing tales of bondage?
The Jewish people's perhaps the longest & cruelest,
With smaller holocausts to spouses, persons, populations (including bison)
Yes, in 1860, my ancestors were shanghied into South Africa -
Zulus were self-confident, with land, cattle, good farming -
Until 1913 (South Africa's notorious Land Act), so INDIA worked
The sweet and bitter sugar plantations in KwaZulu-Natal
Every proud Indian went to prison (as would Gandhi):
Colonialism criminalized those who expected dignity and equality
As did Grandfather, a leader in the coal mines of Natal
II
Today: Africa's Indians are called racists who since 1860
Did not solve segregation and its terminology (while labeled low “coolies’)
Colonial caste categories (“kefir,” “hottentot,” “bushman,” “coloured”)
They live on in our land since Mandela
That Gandhi rose above his London Bar & Indian caste bias, forgotten!
His gift to Africa aborted now because of tribalism, greed, bias.
II
So, there are people who claim to have been slaves
Even today when slavery ended in USA in 1863 by Lincoln
Though all know systems are slower to change than the law -
Yet, a Ms. Winfrey, Harvard's Du Bois, Drs. Carver, King, and Cosby
Have dazzled the world with their progress, more than nations in Africa
in the land where their ancestors had been slaves
Indians of Guyana, Fiji & South Africa
rarely remind the world, and Africa's recent immigrants,
Of their nearness to slavery and "forced immigration":
Some thing - I can't say exactly what - keeps us "Indians" positive
And grateful to Africa, Caribbean, Asia, for new opportunities
Somehow this is portrayed (hear ignorant Malema of South Africa)
As an Indian weakness, to seize limited chances, and make good!
III
Slavery's children now rule the world of the Caribbean!
Or maybe it is a limited Lake, but the Caribbean's "majority" (?)
declare a "right" to rule Trinidad, Guyana, Suriname too
(Or so I heard it said in TnT) "We not want no Coolie Prime Minister!"
When these very Caribbean nations have an "Asian" majority
Once again blame sweet sugar, the erstwhile plantations
That shipped India's beautiful slaves faraway
So African emancipation in the Caribbean became real
For factual paper trail, check out 1834-38 when England ended slavery
Emancipation became a reality as India was colonized, citizens dehumanized
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