I am An African Too by Sukoluhle Joy Chilongo

When the world sees me,

 When the world hears me

When the world thinks me- 

It is the bulging stomach, 

It is the hopelessness in big brown eyes –

 And long thin arms 

Holding up a large begging bowl.

 I am an African too 

So please PLEASE! 

Leave me in this muck of degradation, shame

 For I have reason – 

Good reason to be in this mud!

Globalisation, Colonisation, Mcdonaldisation, Apartheid, Humiliation,

Good reason – see! (...besides, it is too familiar a friend to leave now... and kinda warm)

I am an African too – 

So I dance 

And dance 

While the world, ululates, claps gaps – 

Because the jingle to which I dance

 Is of the chains around my wrists

 So I cannot take back what

 The world owes me. ..

it is the jingle of the chains

 Around around my ankles

 So I cannot go to where my mind has been

 – So I dance –

 and I teach

 My daughters And My sons too –

THE DANCE!!

For we all have the chains,

 After all, we are 

ALL AFRICANS!!

When Love Must by Tracy Sibanda

When love must, it ends.
Where my naked feet trod the same dusty lane
Of fragments already tattered and torn,
Left by one Charmaine,
Silent echoes are thrown in my mind
Men are all the same,
Simply not worth the dreams and longing 
Of women.
No need to mention him in my next poem,
He plays no part in my life story.
Instead

The attention he dignifies with the words love,

Provokes several displays of the rhetoric-
He had to hurt one, 
Why did it have to be me?
He had to love one,
Why couldn’t it be me?
When love must, not even the best of lies or sacrifice can keep us together... 
When it must, 
It ends...
And it has.