Things Bothering Me About South African Policemen Poem by Gert Strydom

While visiting a friend
who was innocently locked up while awaiting trial,
I saw how unapproachable,
chilly, almost emotionless the law officers
are against detainees and their families.

After the fiasco where ostensibly
I wanted to take a photograph
the action of the men surrounding me
locking their hands like cuffs around my wrists
and putting hands in the back of my pants
to hold on to my belt

even the insults and threats
to assault me right there in public
has shown to me how obsessed with force,
how arrogant and absolutely impudent
policemen have become
as if they do not serve the public.

The thing that bothers me even more
is that like in the Anglo-Boer war
white Afrikaner men in that force
are like joiners, like traitors and to survive
they make a mockery of their own culture

will do almost anything
to creep deeper
into the backsides of their black comrades,
as if they are valueless,
totally without manners,
or respect for the rights of other people,

going into life
like the bad white people
that you meet at times,
when called up for military service,
who share naked photographs
and sexual experiences of their wives.

I read the words of a prophet
who forecasts difficult times
and says that the laager of God
is drawn around the houses of everyone
who stays faithful, who stands with their own people,
but they who are one with the enemy
are awaiting destruction.

[References: "Police intimidation" by Gert Strydom. Visionary Nicolaas van Rensburg.]