JABULANI MZINYATHI

ZIMBABWEAN NATIONAL

BORN IN ZIMBABWE

MAGISTRATES COURT

BOX 124

MASVINGO

ZIMBABWE

jabumzi@gmail.com

0026339261388

1. Veiled eyes

Having gobbled the putrid diet

The diet of befuddling religions

Having swallowed hook, line and sinker

The gospel of apostasy

Now with their warped minds

They denigrate themselves unwittingly

Enveloped by the darkness of foolishness

The essence of our ways is warped

Labelling our ways ancestral worship

Conveniently forgetting our intercessors

Hacking at the roots of our confidence

Defiling all our sacrosanct shrines

But the resilience is plain to see

2. African drum

The demonised drum

Speaks to my soul

Soothing my african soul

Sweetly caressing it

Invoking those spirits

The restless spirits of my people

Hot iron branded pagan

Those that dangled at noosed ends

Reverberations of the drum

Spelling out my happiness

At times messages of strife

The demonised drum

3. Africa day reflections

Behind it all

Our unmistakeable resilience

The abundance of hope

For we are no pessimists

The reality plain to see

Profusely bleeding Africa

Fires of discord fanned

The beneficiaries in glee

Robbed of childhood

Playing fields bereft of children

High on lsd, heroin, mandrax

Raping, robbing, killing with impunity

The hidden hand at it

Propping unpopular regimes

The ever widening chasms

Bickering over foreign ideas

Africa bleeding profusely

Somewhere they drink the blood

The prophets long said it

‘The richest place, home to the poorest race’

In Somalia. Sudan, Ethiopia

Everywhere the bloody feuding

The scramble for blood diamonds

Everywhere death and destruction

Beneath all this desolation

The undying hope sprouting

4. Daggers drawn

God is out of it

Watching isms and schisms centre stage

There in the spotlight

Taking precedence

Protestant god at it

Catholic god at it

Fanning fires of division

Papal infallibility questioned

New paths charted

Lessons of love abandoned

Gods of petrol bombs worshipped

Gods of missiles praised

That is the essence

Fighting to please a peace loving god

Killing in the name of god

Did god make man in his image

Is man making god in his image

The emptiness of it plain to see

The bottomless pit of doctrines

5. Chasms

How to build bridges

To bridge the chasms

The spiritual emptiness

That my people cling to

Divided by alien religions

Praying to deaf gods

How to bridge the chasms

My people locked in combat

Incessantly butchering each other

Divided into christians and moslems

Defending the spiritual emptiness

How to bridge the chasms

Dividing my people still

Francophone, anglophone, lusophone

Foreign ideas held supreme

Still locked in deadly combat

Elsewhere they reap the benefits

6. Caution

What warped nationalism is this

What warped Pan Africanism is this

Pretending to fight imperialism

By night selling the sacred inheritance

Betraying those bones not yet interred

Betraying that blood not yet dry

Keeping fellow citizens in chains

The chains of fear and poverty

Holding out trinkets to sycophants

And the ubiquitous opportunists

I reject this blind Pan Africanism

Clapping and ululating to aid violence

Now in the vortex of violence

Aiding fratricide, matricide, patricide

To spite the enslavers, colonisers, imperialists

See they hide behind revolutionary rhetoric

Their deception is destined for the dung heap

7. Reality check

The truth shall set you free

The preacher man said so

The politician took to the podium

The claim: his word was the truth

Then I saw images of freedom

On the streets I saw the squalor

The politician’s bin full of left overs

Then he sped past in imported cars

Then I remembered his word

The preacher man’s word I recalled

Now is the time for truth

Bound in shackles and chains

Then thrown into the dungeons

The penalty for truth is death

8. Triumph

The dropping bombs

Bombs of propaganda

Bombarding my brain paths

All these gods

Seeking to cage my mind

Weaving their webs

Torrents of religions

Seeking to drown my soul

The din of futility

The vibrancy of my roots

Repelling their machinations

The din of triumph

9. Burial

Tug of war

Dead body- the rope

Vultures feast

At the centre the carrion

The priest armed with hell

The dead body- a pulpit

With putrid speech – the politician

The dead body –a podium

Liars not to be outdone

Even the wicked are saintly

10. Dreams

Bereft of dreams

Dreams bashed by truncheons

Dreams under jackboots

Jackboots of the philistines

Dreams in solitary confinement

Dreams whimpering for freedom

That is the healing of my nation