Examining shaky foundations

By Prof Dennis Brutus

When conditions are so unseemly
even the blind are made aghast
and police are firing rubber bullets*
in defense of the indefensible
it is time Messers Makgoba
and Mandela and others of your ilk
to reassess your gains and efforts –
more importantly, reassess your
measuring rods, question your values

Respectfully I offer, you cannot construct
an edifice on dishonest roots
cannot hope it will stand:
structures built on shards
or crumbled fragments of tortured bone
must, of necessity, crumble

Structures built on deceit and lies,
such structures cannot survive:
in the harsh light of everyday
under scrutiny they will
not survive

Bring out from padded rags
those covered lies, deceptions
deceits, distortions, misrepresentations
all contrived to preserve the myths
heroic mythology of our unsullied cause

Dig out the shabby skeletons:
jaunty Sol Kerzner with his handy ‘copters
and that ready wad to shut inquiring eyes
the Koornhofs who could bend apartheid laws
licentiously, lubriciously:
Brett Kebble’s multiple ambidexterities

There is no way to build a truthful narrative
if you begin your tale with a tissue of lies:
fabrications, deceptions, contrivances
striving to preserve old inequities
striving only to secure your share
of those same inequities under a gloss
of iconic virtues and integrities
carefully nurtured to complaisant media
complaisant handmaidens of their
corporate lords

We may aspire in our dreams
for the Nile, the Mountains of the Moon,
storied wisdom from the Valley of the Kings**
but Southward headed we may slosh
through Antarctic iceflows – worse
gurgling in Kakpype of Kwazekele beach: ***

To Begin: let’s name the criminals:
DeKlerk and Koornhof, Kebble, Oppenheimer,
Let us begin a new, a clean beginning
one true, respecting the people’s hope
for a different better world:
or let us else make an end
and no more talk of human rights

Let us, at least, be truthful to ourselves

3/4/09

* an attack by Durban police on UKZN students protesting socio-economic injustices, in which a blind student — amongst a dozen others — was injured by rubber bullets, 23 March 2009
** currently in educational circles, the wisdom of Egypt, and of the Valley of the Kings, is being touted
*** Kakpype = shitpipes: Port Elizabeth sewage pipes emptied into the area where black people were allowed to swim in my youth