By Tiro Makhudu I am the blood, bone, and tears of my ancestors. I am the ache of the thousands raped, the millions brutalised and each one of the dispossessed.
I am the dignity you took and the pride you shattered. I am the graves upon which you built your empire as you laughed at their pain. I am the civilization you call Bantu. I am the people you destroyed.
I am Sarah Baartman before you took away her name to replace it with a lie, strip her naked and cage her like an animal in a zoo.
I am the Nama, Herero, and Khoe who choked on your smallpox and the lie you hung around Shaka’s neck. I am them all before the ships landed on our shores and the whips landed on our backs.
I am the screams of a million slaves who’s skulls bellow from the depths of the Atlantic ocean. I am that spirit your whips and chains could not break. I am that which even the sun could not smite.
I walk proudly in the tribe of the monkey and pray softly the song of the clan of the springbok.
I am the blood, bone, and tears of my ancestors but I will not be trampled underfoot.
I am the blood, bone, and tears of my ancestors. those who knelt down in prayer and the world shook.
my being will not whittle as long as Africa stands for it am her soul and she is mine
By Tiro Makhudu Tiro Makhudu is an aspiring writer who has written for several local television productions and a voice screaming the narrative that needs to be heard with no one willing it to tell it. With an unapologetic, no-nonsense approach, Tiro holds no punches and purports to wake the spirit of his fellow man with the belief that that woke spirit will translate into a sharp and pro-African weapon of a mind that will deliver the African from his mind, body and soul penitentiary. An Africanist through and through and all-round social commentator, Tiroseeks to plant his tiny seedlings in the landscape of the discourse that will one day give rise to the brightest Africa that the winds of change and hands of time will allow
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