An Elegy For South Africa Poem by Gert Strydom

Weep South Africa
as you are no longer my country
and I live here
as if I am
from another planet

as part of a small minority
in a country where dark Africa
declares murderers as heroes
and act like barbarians
and dance and scream.

At a time the orange, white and blue
streamed proud over you
and people at work,
school to parliament
bended their knees to God

who was their supreme leader
right through hordes
at blood river,
the onslaught of the British Empire

and with God on our side
we would quarter
for nobody and nothing.

Our own culture flowered,
children went through schools
right through university
to distinguish themselves
and you could even leave the doors unlocked,
could make a living somewhere,
the police were a servant and a friend
and we under our own rule.

How many times our ancestors
tried to teach other people of God,
distributed medicine and food
and we even faced
the communists and Cubans in Angola,

till on a day a man
for the wide world a hero,
out of our own ranks betrayed his brothers
and he laid the whole country lame
and didn’t sell it out,
but rather gave it away.

Today incompetents are everywhere in control
of state departments
right through into the parliament,
money is squandered,
a whole generation
through their own choosing
did not receive any school education,
whites are affirmed and impoverished by the law
and criminals and foreigners stream in
from all over Africa
to start a new life here.

Today another Afrikaner son is slaughtered
(one of more than three thousand) ,
what happens tomorrow and the next day?

[Reference: Murder on Eugene Terreblance. General condition in the country.]