Woman In Chains

she carries the child on tired hips rested on chains ‘round her waist wasted on freedom designed to serve a white man’s lustful desire branded inferior as time repeats itself and the pain knows no end a tattoo on her skin confirms her as chattel in self-righteous shackles festering wounds of Apartheid resemble the foul stench of humanity as her child suckles from an empty breast and cries out for more they did not really abandon slavery merely gave it a different name too sweet are the rewards of exploiting the world as we know it division of labour and they enshrined her firmly as an illiterate pawn her soul wrapped in skin and bones and her eyes like rusted steel an empty gaze almost gave up on merits of justice from hollow eyes camped in concentration of power domination she is raped daily of her dignity while she ploughs on in fields of plenty and the dust of history and yet she never gives up on struggle for emancipation some got the vote in a rigged system with dice slicing the fortune disembowled by wolves in capital’s fangs her innermost treasure has become hope that succumbs to memories of her forebears born into poverty and meant to stay there she rattles her manacles in vain in defeat because leg irons and handcuffs are made from diamonds and gold in the heartland of theft and misappropriation when her child dies she carries another from the master’s loins expendable and forgotten her tears are salty and polish the gyves and just maybe might help to corrode bilboes and unholy bonds because human emotions do not forget who triggered the hurt outcast in a so called homelands or locations she requires a pass to enter the kingdom of opulence in which she serves as a maid but the young maiden has become old and dies cleaning their dirt a stolen life is all that her daughters will remember with hatred and when they rise they too will die by the greed of their captors but one day the tables will turn and revolve in anger and retribution 20th August 2020 ‘Apartheid’ in South Africa was the system of racial discrimination Workers needed a ‘passbook’ to enter rich suburbs for work ‘Homelands’ were the allocated regions where black people would live Their abodes where called ‘locations’ to sweeten the tongue of evil