In #PoeticLicence @Rabbie_Wrote put this week’s politics into poetry #CyrilRamaphosa

Award-winning poet, journalist and author Rabbie Wrote Serumula. Picture by Nokuthula Mbatha

Award-winning poet, journalist and author Rabbie Wrote Serumula. Picture by Nokuthula Mbatha

Published Feb 17, 2018

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The air here has grown too thick for our lungs.

This place is ugly. It frightens us.

But we refused to surrender even when our dust-laced, spider-web infested stomachs always remind us of Nkandla.

Dry communal taps near mobile toilets will always remind us of a fire-pool where demons are baptised and angels drown.

But we are dreamers. And dreamers live longer.

We have been dreaming with our hands.

Even in our dreams we seek to expand

And our RDP’s we extend.

We have grown weary of cooking up riots.

We thought no amount of smoke signals could save us.

But the rubber bullet deities, burning tyre gods heeded to our silent prayers.

The king reigned terror for nine years and seemed to have the lives of two cats.

We have seen him.

He barters with a nation in exchange for a paradise built on our sweat.

He never foresaw his disdained past coming to collect the dues of the pain he inflicted on a people that has forfeited hope.

We have wept.

PICTURE: Henk Kruger/African News Agency (ANA)

Now the peasants are rejoicing.

We have forever been looking forward to the manifestation of the one thing.

The initial dream of #ZumaHasFallen and that made us stronger.

For far too long we resided in a land where the king was a tyrant.

And the gods were Guptas.

No more racking fear from these racketeers and white-collar looters -

An unseen power supposedly moving in silence.

Had they learned from David, when Copperfield vanished the Statue of Liberty

Maybe we would have not seen their aircraft landing at Air Force Base Waterkloof.

But in that aircraft, Karma was one of the passengers.

We have seen her.

She has unchained her wrath. It has gone rogue with no plans of holding back.

She’s dishing out the punches we have rolled with since Mbeki left.

The Gupta gods are outed as false prophets.

We foresee an Armageddon in the dark corners of these gold-plated, shape-shifting streets.

The man-made paradise is crumbling and Duduzane Zuma is falling apart at the seams.

It seems his alleged fraud scandal at the Estina dairy farm isn’t even tugging at the supposed benefiting black farmer’s heartstrings.

Fragile bones are in the horizon at Vrede.

4000 hectares of farmland, yet there are no cows to milk.

I guess Estina dairy farm was the cow to be milked by politicians and business people who pocketed millions from that project earmarked for emerging black farmers.

Why would their hearts sing?

What melody does a fractured chest memorise?

Would its rhythm not alter their being into savage cows at a slaughter, feeding on the carcass of the farm owner for whose dealings they chastise?

It's funny how milk is the glue binding together investigations of State Capture.

The martyrdom is ending for the laymen who have been dying to breathe.

The promise of a new king comes with a siege fashioned from hawks.

He too is a tyrant but at least there’s a decency with his deceit.

His coronation however, should be seen as a breath of fresh air.

We have burned too many tyres, there’s nothing fresh about the air anymore.

@Rabbie_Wrote

@OpusPoetry

* This poem was co-written by Magnum Opus. Rabbie Wrote is one of three founding and current members in the ensemble of award-winning poets.

The Saturday Star

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