Poetry Corner: Boitumelo Mofokeng – Tribute to Tsietsi Mashinini & Another June 16 in my lifetime

Tribute to Tsietsi Mashinini

–       The 1976 student uprising leader

Blessed is the mother

Who gave birth to this son

The comforting hands she carried him with

The pride she had to bring him up

This son of the revolution.

Brothers and sisters

Have courage to part with him

Our believed tsietsi

He did not want to go

But the pressure upon him

He could not bear.

I shall not accuse the hostel dwellers

Of their stupidity

But sympathise with them

For they were set against you

By the racist, oppressive regime

For the price of your life

And that of the struggling masses, your people.

I honour his followers

For they did not fear death

Even now they share in his courage

Our solidarity shall not be broken

Solidarity is forever, ‘til you come again!’

The police who went after you

Will crawl on their knees

Their conscience torturing them

They’ll die too

They’ll return to dust that shall be blown away

You will remain among us in triumph.

I promise you my solidarity

For the courage in you and

The faith I have in you

You are my hope

My sympathy I give to your family

That has loved you and will always love you

We will await your return.

Wherever you are

Sone of the soil, son of the revolution

I honour you for what you did for me

To discover the blackness in me

The dignity I uphold for being black

My clenched fist I raise

Mayibuye iAfrika!

–       12 August 1977

Tsietsi died in exile in 1990. His remains were brought home for burial.

Another June 16 in my lifetime

–       in commemoration of june 1976, a turning point in the life of a black child

This child I name

Nkululeko, Tokoloho

This child is born of a bitter struggle

Of a marriage of perseverance

Of tears, blood and toil

Of crushed yet forever rising hopes

Of truths untold yet still to be revealed.

Nkululeko, Tokoloho

The ground upon which you are standing now

Is resting on the scaffolds

Of skulls and limbs of your people

People whose lives and dignity were trampled upon

People whose limbs broke, were broken

Blown with bombs of injustice

As they hammered, drilled, shook and moved

The thought-to-be-indestructible pillars of injustice

Until their flesh was stripped

There were no more blood, saliva nor tears

To sustain them

Only their quest for freedom and justice

Kept them holding the ground upon which you are standing.

Nkululeko, Tokoloho

Feel this ground bend down

Put your ear on the ground

Listen to the echoes of the singing and chanting masses

To the piercing sounds of cries of your people

And the endless release of rounds of bullets on your people.

Nkululeko, Tokoloho

It is not for you to forget

The ground upon which you are standing

Is fertile from feeding from the flesh of your people

From the sweat and blood of their resistance

For every soul

Whose remains make the particles of this soil

Plant a tree

To hold the soil

To give shade to the sun burned souls

To prevent the torrent rains from taking your ancestral souls to exile

To lands unknown to you.

Nkululeko, Tokoloho

My child

It is exactly twenty-one years

Since you were conceived in me

There were others before you

Some are buried in exile

Some are maimed

Some are blind

Many of them remain

The evidence of the tyrannic, draconian rule

Of the past three hundred years, even more.

Remember child

It is not for you to forget

Arise and shine

Run with the flame of freedom

Cast light in the dark shadowed lives of your brothers and sisters

Rebuild this country, your home

This chapter I leave for you and generations to come after you.

–       11 June 1994