Scream: A Brief History Of Oppression Chapter 08 Poem by Martin Lochner

leaving rural kraals
to find work in the cities
leaving wives and children behind
promising to send a subsistence and some letters

going to hostels and townships
working the mines
dying of asbestoses
buried in unmarked municipality graves

walking through afrikaner suburbs
looking for gardening or ironing jobs
stopped by police to check the ‘dom pass’

checking the time
running fast for the last train,
the clock rule prevails
otherwise a good beating and a night in the ping
going back to paraffin shacks
winds ripping on oil skin roofs
cold frosting and heat perspiring
on cardboard box walls

growing resentment of
whites only signs into banks, restaurants,
parks, beaches, and public toilets
verbal, physical, emotional abuse,
cursing their predicament

the neighbour cries as her husband is taken away
by the security police
beating him into a yellow service van
for anti government activities

activists sent to robben island for twenty years hard labour
tortured to a mental fry... cleverness rocking in psychiatrist ward
despatched from life in pretoria correctional facility
the wife vainly enquiring about the whereabouts of her husband

plaatjies forms the african national congress
awareness starts with steve biko dying violently in detention
bleeding empty for being a clever kaffir
resistance grows with walter sisulu
conviction increases with desmond tutu
nelson mandela cool calculator for freedom
takes the gamble for the collective relief of suffering
knowing the rivionia trial could cost him his life
not recanting he takes detention for 27 years of his
life...working ceaselessly in a confined space
to direct the apartheid theatre

the african youth rises up in the townships, throwing
the bones for their futures
burning tyres, obstructing paths, with mere
stones they confront the military,
willing to fight to the death
in sharpeville the armed forces shooting
rubber bullets, then loading live rounds
shooting children in the back as they flee

poor hector peterson picking up the last brick
gets three in the chest and dies in his brothers arms
a journalist gets that award winning picture
and the world rages calling an end to this horror

fw de klerk having his cigarette in mandela’s cell
calls a truce and works ceaselessly to start the countdown
for the end of the segregation regime
he instructs the release of nelson mandela.

outraged silence prevails in the suburbs and joy
sounds in the ghettos.