Freedom Park Poem by Gert Strydom

Build your monument to a war
that you have lost at Cuito Cuanavale
and try to deceive the world
about your victory

which was rather your huge loss
and hail Russians and Cubans as your heroes
and we who have paid the cost
knows where victory really laid

and that no bugle ever played its last farewell
to the enemy we sent to hell
and although no one mourns our dead
most of us live on instead.

We do not need to be on any
honour wall
or to be associated
with your heroes
who mowed down people
praying in a church
and set off bombs in the street.

We never lost any battle
nor a war
and our honour is in the lives
of every man, women and child
who in a way are still free.



[Reference: “The results of the campaign up to April 1988 were 4,785 killed on the Cuban/Faplan side, with 94 tanks and hundreds of combat vehicles destroyed, against 31 South Africans killed in action,3 tanks destroyed (SADF tanks entered the war after the Lomba River campaign) and 11 SADF armoured cars and troop carriers lost. A total of 9 Migs were destroyed and only 1 SAAF Mirage shot down.” Jannie Geldenhuys.1994. At the front. P240. Johanathan Ball Publishers.]