There's No Africa Without Us
We did not choose Africa.
It chose us.
There's no Africa without us.
For a while
we thought the Berlin Conference
would change us, but
nothing changed us, not even
the colonial rituals you brought, not even
the whole Era of Apartheid, and the
plunder of our wealth.
We gave everything
and asked nothing in return.
We are cheap and very undemanding.
We are a well behaved and disciplined people,
with our lies and our smiles
and stories about our lives.
We did not know the meaning of gods
that men look like them despite appearances.
To learn about the world,
to discover the one we were deprived of,
we opened our innocence.
After so many prophecies
sweating and breathless and confused
our scattered souls are frozen.
Did you ever realize at all
what was happening to us?
You will find us again between the heart
and mind, where disgraced
we'll dance together again, but to a song
you and us would never choose to hear,
in the name of something new
and feel our fate in what we cannot know.
This is our Africa.
And we are present, the end
or beginning of humanity
feeding with the dead,
with you surrounding us
composing our world
We are it: it is us
whose beauty wavers with us
violated beyond all imagining
whose old wounds are scarred on our skulls
whose democracy lies in griefs and sorrows
clothed in institutionalized despair
we are perpetually reinventing time.
It is your turn now,
your turn to follow us.
There's no Africa without us.
Copyright © Edward Ndopu | Year Posted 2017
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