The Health Question Poem by Mpho Ramaano

i watch our sickly kids,
mamas and gogos with wilting flaccid bones
collapse in the long open-ended queues
in public hospitals

poor middle income earner
buttered by the neo-liberal EPAs* and SAPs**
that erode her “middle class” stature
throws her frustration
on the downtrodden ailing masses

resting on high-heeled shoes
in silver brown stockings
blue skirt and white blouse
this nursing sister shouts:
“le a re crowda! ”

she has lost a dream
to aid the working poor
of the abandoned peri-urban
and rural peripheries

i shed a tear in silence
mourning health worker’s humanism
murdered by breton wood institutions’ greed
of capitalist expansion

this tendency to privatize
slyly impounds our right to life
stripping us of dignity

but the liberal politician terms it
economic integration of the third world
when a poor man’s life is corroded
by the west’s neoliberal gains

still, pauperised workers remain voting fodder
for the liberal bourgeois parliamentarian

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Notes:

* Economic Partnership Agreements
** Structural Adjustment Programmes