Staffrider Vol.3 No.1 Feb 1980 - DISA

Poetry/Swaziland, Lesotho, NamibiaMESSAGE TO JOBURG NORTHYouwithyour cream-white complexionabout to inventa wonderful machineto lift you from bedand stand you in your shoesLook under your feet:For you're standing on a peoplewho'll soon shatter your complacencyand turn offyour electric carving-knife.Richie Levin/SwazilandPART III NO. 1The dark angel took seven starsAnd flung them to the crimson hell-flaresThis quickened the anger of the crowd,Who surged, helpless humanity, against thegaudy podiumAnd virile cowboys start whippingThe air is whipped till it stinksThis happened some years agoAnd, surely not, blood in thick disastrous goutsFrom you yourselfQuick over your sweating body.There will be lines of men with machine-guns,bombed villages,A crate in the shopping centreInto which waste is flung.Behold, if there is no God, I am He.Give me my whip.Peter Stewart/LesothoPART III No. 2.I loved you like the diamondsThat glistened through wet mossesCointreau, the liqueur of oranges, sweet and high,On a tube trainAnd the cities grind onThe cities grind onAnd on my bed I toss, like a carcass of meatturned on the spitAnd in the mine compoundsAnd in the hearts and in the cornerIn the centre five thin uncles play dice for money,with abandonJoshua Mfolo was murdered with an axe onthe 26 of FebruaryAnd after the oldest tourist train in the world,Fleas on the seats, six minutes,This is the oceanI loved you in the ocean, for my love for youvanished, evaporated, I didn't love you anymoreAnd I drownedAnd divided into many human beingsEach with social class, in some part of theworld, with incomes, status, virtue, and thelack of theseWho are you now?I will love you becauseI do not love you yetBecause of the good news that came whenhunger had helped to reduce the remainingfamily to painfully subdued frustrations andpermanent tension.You are my neighbour.Peter Stewart/LesothoTHE SMALL TRADERHere the policemen go barechestedand the makakunyas, young boys, spiton their country: last nighta store was destroyed by 'persons unknown'the police blame the guerillas,the guerillas blame the police;and the small tradercaught in these sudden eruptionslike dog's vomit on the groundsat up in bed (knowing which side he was on)and wonderedwhich sidewas on himKelwyn Sole/Namibia16 STAFFRIDER, FEBRUARY 1980