Under The Hillock At The Voortrekker Monument Poem by Gert Strydom

(after William Butler Yeats)

I do swear that when my ancestors came
to South Africa as pioneers,
they trekked throughout this land
to explore it and to find a place
to make a life under a African sun

and I swear that those horsemen
were almost saddle born,
where marksmen with a keen knowledge
of the veldt, of how nature does function,
that the women were almost superhuman
although the sun burnt their white complexions,
when they crossed the mountains,
the rivers and made a place to live
in the wild untamed land that this country
had been at a time

and I know that cities and towns and farms
were established, industries, mines and factories
and even the network
of roads and rails
that does link every place
as if their lives still lives on into immortality
even if the names given to cities and towns,
to the roads are changed
to wipe out the contribution that they brought

and when I go to the kopje
where the marble Voortrekker monument
rises above Pretoria
and scene out their battles,
the hardship of just making an existence
as human beings, as a nation, as a people

here is essence of what I am saying:


thousands of innocent people that preceded me have died
in battles with the natives who murdered some of them,
in war against the British government and its army,
as women and children in British concentration camps
and I have been called up to military to go to war
just to be able to make a life,
have experienced the hardships that war does bring,
have seen the natives setting each other alight
with car tires and petrol
have been affirmed out of work,
although I have got a university degree
and a hell of a lot of experience
by a self centered self righteous black regime
that is corrupt to the highest level of governance

but when people do call to each other to war,
do even pray for it,
do pray that war will come against
those who do sit in government offices shuffling papers
without a clue of how to work properly,
who is destroying this country bit by bit

then I do know that there is madness to it,
that it is far better to have this kind of peace
even if robberies, rape and pillage
does not stop
even if every white person
or Colored or Indian person
is at the mercy
of people whose ancestors in the distant past
did come from the great African lakes
from a place they call eMbo
in a great roving expedition
under Nguni and Dlamini

and like my forefathers
I do bend my knee to God,
do pay my tithes and offerings
with the little that I do earn
and are hospitable to others,
do help those that are in greater need
than I am

while I wait for deliverance to come
from the omnipotent Lord God
who does set governments in place
and who brings them to destruction at a time
while I do trust that His year of jubilee
is drawing near.

[Reference: "Under Ben Bulben" by William Butler Yeats.]