Newspaper by Lilian Dube

That sick headline-
Death born of a chipped shoulder
Feuds growing older
Murderers bolder
The war of injured egos
And misaligned wills incurable ills
Racial name tags, burnt flags
Utopian ruins, conflicts brewing
Distorted protocol
Mockeries most of all
Dictatorial lusts, unjustified pasts
‘Democratic games’, masked campaigns
Seething citizens
Hostile ceremonies, unseen
Political matrimonies
Tragic constitutions
Immoral resolutions
Missile factories, the flooding Canaries
Global warming, sterile technologies
Hedonistic theologies
Pessimist’s theories
Wastelands, brain cancers
Toy soldiers, mass graves
Delayed apologies-
A million children, a billion lives
- Close down the paper house! –
Why have our shame flaunt itself in print??

National Healing by Thandeka Gonde

Wounds that bled, gradually healed
But ugly scars thrust in our faces remained
Evil marks our actions left on our land
Innocent blood we inadvertently got on our hands
Mere reminders of where we come from

As for the atrocities and massacres
The crippling, maiming and cold-blooded murders
Random arrests and assorted weapons of torture
Breeding anger and hate, festering on the verge of rupture
Things we cannot, or rather, may not talk about
The backward still think “attempted extermination”
But did we not say “a moment of madness”

A decade of racial purification
Necessitated propaganda and astronomical inflation
Uprising was toned down to manageable degrees
While our engineers worked flat out to rectify the ballot gone haywire
Skyrocketing corruption, humanity bereft of dignity
Simultaneous outbreaks of disease and bearer’s cheques
Inbred hostility born of the scramble for survival
Lest we forget these chronicles of our valiant expedition
Our gallant march, in solidarity, towards “national healing”

Under The Oak Tree by Wanelisa Albert

Under the oak tree
Stood my grandfather's
Great grandfather's
Father
Amongst the sheep
And exotic fruit
To be sold
But to be fair
At a bit higher price


Under the oak tree
Stood my grandmother's
Great grandmother's
Mother
To be traded
To a master
Who would repeatedly
Rape her
Repeatedly


Under the oak tree
Stood their child
Scared and lonely
Freshly ripped
From the beast of her mother
Living an orphaned life
In a dusty and wet dungeon
And taught the religion
Of freedom by oppressors


Under the oak tree
Stood my brother
Flogged for his quest
For emancipation: self determination
But was given a European name (klienbooi)
Skin branded with blazing iron
"Dutch East India Company"
Another gently brutal reminder
His life: White man's commodity


Under the oak tree
Stands I
Today.
Looking at the blood
Streamin from the pores of my Family Tree
Choosing to look the past boldly in the eye
And still forgive
For now I am free
Well, kinda.....

The Pain Of My Shadow by Alfred Tembo

Beneath trembling feet,
Shivering, groaning blistered, spirited sigh.
Sole-boil out of shape.
A closing gap between me and future
Continue learning the other way round.
Who am I?
Is it the faded shadow? Or the striving?
Galloping windows of opportunities?
Up side down skies?
The cursed waters? The blood of Afghanistan ?
The black European in Africa ? The questioning dog?
Who will I be in the future?
Is it the writer? The Homer?
Pained and future starved teacher?
The inverted river? The dead man?
A frustrated father? The Boer?
How groaningly watching my face in
A water glass –see a trembling window
With the image of mo-
Pain I will die with.
Breath of smoke, beneath the filed the court case a madman writing.
The appealing rumor of my identity.
Zoom the past, see the wicked banner of a killed baby –
Admiring the wicked mule.-the mother
Lineage and dump- future I create today,
Making hay in winter-
A failure.
Blurring the community image – I degrease
Birth phantom, ruined.
Smeared with tears of a wasted life time journey.
Image, a blood smeared baby, a smartly dressed copse
I see myself driven to the "end of the world "too
The swimming hippo of Savannah
Watching a television in the grassland of my home
The shadow lone
Am not the invisible Atlanta , yet I gouged in river lathe I let my past.
The future is a fallopian tube of the past
No mother, no education, no me
I am my shadow. Grating beneath the slow driven
Wheels of poverty.
With a lying mouth.
Completing sinning like hell, pot, eat a goat and
Berging for forgiveness.
Sooner or later
"Bergfilth character"
Scratching the itch. Alley
Way of the God’s temple.
Breathing a sex mouth
Am still looking for employment
I tell my pregnant buffalo wife.
Looking like a frog, a hippo,
she said," me a widow

Oh you the shadow of my pain go on

I am Still Afraid Of Bleeding by Llyoyd Machacha

When I left home bleeding
My parents were left bleeding
In “non-existent” camps humanity was left bleeding
My sister is up to now still bleeding
For teaching that it is inhuman to cause bleeding
Teacher Johns and Pastor Demo were left bleeding
For donating bandages to stop bleeding
Businessman Bill and Doctor Eve were left bleeding
The economy is bleeding
Our international image is still bleeding
Education, Health and Infrastructure are bleeding
All because others specialize in causing bleeding
For defending the rights of the bleeding
Lawyer Tim and Activist Jane were left bleeding
For writing about cases of bleeding
Journalist Elizabeth and Writer James were left bleeding
Who and what was not left bleeding?
Who and what are now safe from bleeding?
Everyone is still afraid of bleeding
That’s why the economy is still bleeding
Although nobody likes bleeding
Others like to cause bleeding
For home my heart is bleeding
But I’m still afraid of bleeding

Pythons In The Cave by Patrick Hwande

I, too belong to the cave
Where pythons reside
The multi-coloured reptiles
With subtle manoeuvres
I used to live in the same cave
With nominal rights and responsibilities
It’s a hell-hole where powerful pythons
Flout rules with tremendous bliss
I belong to the cave
Whose vibrating heat
Drove me far, far away
Now I rummage for bread and butter
In better lands
I belong to the cave
Blessed with silent majority
And the vocal minority
Where blazing blankets bubble
In furious fire
It’s a cave where the Honourables
Have what they don’t need
While Super-patriots don’t have
What they desperately need

In The Painting Of an African by Alfred Tembo

women spilling of anguish pain
Sighing a spell of relief
Faded grief struck permanently
On her inside walls
Walls of existence in moral world
Robbed by facades of insecurity
Worries in Vanity
Watching name losing vowels
Meaning –Vanished in her thick memory
relation died as bubbles of surf among the kings men's
Life was paralyzed, gnawed, tipped with a barren womb
Sneered under dead flames of Zeus’,smoke and thunderous dust
Her petals were rust with undefined less of trembling colors
An a dour of past and stale smoke decanted to the ancestors of poverty
Pest rejected in ant of wildlife like cancer to herself she attracts none as lantanacamara has no admires
Under peripheral of poverty s loneliness
She picks herself up.
In struggle looking –walking –talking frail and wearily
The journey continues and agony
As each sunrise ends it ,with nor with sunset
Settles her burden on her head
Down the dust road a york image of an orange horizon of tropical savanna welcomes
Contemplates, in down of indecisive spectrum attributed by her yes
Dust her back and finally a step forward in making a search of courage
Blessed be all mothers

I Wonder by Otsile Phalwane

I wonder
If he knew I have been thinking of him
I wonder
If he knew I have been caring for him
I wonder
If he knew I am loving him more than ever
I wonder
If he knew I have been watching him
I wonder
If he knew I can feel him
I wonder
If he knew in my dreams when I sleep I keep him close to me
I am thinking
His the thunder of my lighting
I am thinking
He is the only one who can make me melt
I am growing
Close to him more than ever
I am glowing
With all the floor of happy laughter
I am sailing without a destination exploring changed place with him by my side

Connection by Solwazi Nkiwane

Unshackle the shackles
The sky from the heavens
And the fish from the sea

Can't you see
It can not be
if you and me
Were never we
Who would we be

If morning was never there
Would the world be what we see
So you see
Everything is meant to be.

Love Is War by Philip S Mandipira

lf l fall in it l fight

If l fall in it l feel fragile

lf l fall in it lam a fool

Our hearts are used  as  a shield

As we fight for this love in this battlefield

We are soldiers in love

ln search of love

The spear of love strikes through our lonely hearts

Amid the battle of love

Love leads us nowhere

Love lives us with broken hearts

A broken hearts bleeds

Love is a weapon used to destroy peoples' hearts

Love is an illusion filled with sadness and confusion

If l can feel it ,you can feel it too

Because it's in each and everyone of us

But seriously,

Love don't  love us

lf love love us

Then why do love let emotions come between us

l can only remember the bad times we fought

One moment she loves me,another moment she loves me not

 Some lose the battle but win the war

 Some win the battle but loose the war

 Everybody,everywhere is searching for love

 Even those that are in the caravan of love

 In this battle of love,there is confusion

 In this battle of love,there is fake affection

 Why is love so complicated

In this battle of love,expect the unexpected

Love is  nothing but a fool's game

Too much love drives a man insane

Love is a symbol of war

Love is a mater of  war

If it makes us cry,it's a matter of war

If it makes you die,it's a matter of war

lf it makes you lie,it's a matter of war

 We try to be lovers in love

  But in the end we become fighters in war