We Still Have Hope For A Free Africa Poem by Phillip Nine Mafunga

Head hanging like a weeping willow
A tree so foreign, but my conscience, my pillow
That daydreams of the beauty of our dear Africa
The spleandour that defies the wry smiles of her enemies

Rising from the oceans of the south, the Drakensberg-Great dyke belt out into the southern clouds
As Kilimanjaro allows the Masai souls to peer into the beyond with reverence
While the dreadlocked Nimba to the west keeps mortals from harm's way all year round
The Atlas to the north defies the bronze desert skies with her majestic gait

If we all could gather on Kibo n' see where we came from
Maybe if we all stood on Toubkal n' understood where most of our misery came from
Peered into the many valleys animated by the insatiable desires of the black mortals
The mortals that have survived the many steeps n' escarpments littered with chains n's bombs

The Nile, carrying the story of our resistance to the outer world
The Niger, that of conquest n'of enslavement by the outer world
The Congo, the genocide n' looting of our mineral wealth
While the Zambezi, the story of colonisation n' apartheid

It was in the Zambezi n' Limpopo Valleys that we found refuge
It was in the Great Rift Valley that the Mau Mau war cries echoed
From the banks of the Nile, the ancient inspired the present
Even as we stand on Nkrumah's liberation peak, we still've hope for a free Africa
25/02/2022