Say yes they were protesting against Zuma on Monday.
Justification for their mauling still lacks.
Like services in their community of gridless, waterless shacks.
No water in Cape Town is mass panic.
But in many places like the farm of oranges, at the tenth extension in the south of Joburg,
They eat that fear for breakfast and wash it down with a glass of air.
There is no electricity here.
Poverty doesn’t live here, it is the landlord.
Their humanity is at the mercy of zinc plates and cardboards.
There has never been water here, and residents were livid.
Day zero is a recurring, cracking, creaking, reality and they are forced to live it.
Even when the sun is at its angriest, warm air from melting tar is a myth.
All their skin meets is a sand’s kiss.
A van pulled up. They jumped in and rode the golden path to Luthuli house.
52-year-old Nkateko Makete understands this.
Whenever they ask, she tells them she understood on Monday what being hellbent
on a trip to hell meant.
Tell them the devil doesn’t seem to care if you land in his abode at the wrong time.
His mission, once you are there, is to turn the fire on.
Before the flames licked Makete’s body without a care.
A body of Black First Land First members got into that van, including her.
It meandered the dust cloud creating, gravel roads of the farm.
Reached concrete streets with lights in the Joburg CBD.
All this electricity looks unfamiliar to a service delivery deprived mass.
The juiciest looking bone of contentment -
Their sin, was attempting to hand over a memorandum of grievances to Paul Mashatile, the Gauteng MEC for Human Settlements.
Their gain, a beating at the hands, feet and a stick from ANC members.
Their problem, having a glitch in their space time continuum bending machine and landing at the right place, at a wrong time.
A shuttle aimed for the moon to be closer to God,
Got warped into a black hole, a portal that opened in earth’s core at the of corner President and Pixley Seme streets.
And they met their maker’s nemesis, who brought heat,
The devil in a ANC T-shirt.
She did not know there was a protest.
PAIN: Nkateko Makete
She was booted. Her constitutional rights looted.
She took the hardest of falls and a piece of herself never got up from the ground.
ANC Joburg regional secretary Thabiso Setona “is not a violent person”.
His colleagues were all shocked when they found out he was the storm
that destroyed even its eye.
He is suspended. She shot across bitter airs and is in pain.
He is sorry. She still lives in squalor.
He handed himself over to police. She is still to hand over the memorandum.
The same police and JMPD failed to prevent the assaults.
Service delivery was top of her list. But now justice is first.
She still has to fight for water in the dark while attempting to overcome thirst.
What quarrel does an umbrella have with pellets of frozen rain?
She must just go home, her shack awaits her.
Luthuli House, who will save us when we find ourselves here?
@Rabbie_Wrote
* 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.
@OpusPoetry