Troublemaker by Natasha Walker

Troublemaker

We demonstrated to resist The old white men of state. “He’s just a bloody terrorist,” Said dad, “He kills, he maims. He’d hate To leave his five-star gaol Or see the loath’d colonialists fail: It’d rob him of his cause. A terrorist stays out of power And leaves those dull political chores To those who work. Now, every hour They come in droves to Joburg’s squat Or southern farms, their homes forgot. The money’s good; if life’s so bad They’d work in Mozambique or Chad. There’s no one forcing them to stay They could just up and go away.” And so my dad summed up this traitor, Comparing him to one who later Lent his face to Occupy; A fine redemption for the Guy.

And so, with Robert, Charles and co., Nelson could have led to more Repression, hatred, death, but no; Released, he stepped onto the shore Across from Robben Island’s wall And looked around and called on all Who raged, yet loved this frightened land To close their ranks and hand in hand Not merge, but share their beating colours And curve up high in one broad arch

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Of pride and curiosity and valour A multicoloured choir to march Upon the future world And see a dream unfold.

Mandela free at last in glory: A happy-ever-after-story. It seemed to be a prince’s tale A proof that honour will prevail. He could’ve simply sat aloft His throne and murmured wisdom, truth An academic sceptre-holder, soft On enemies and mightily aloof From the mire and filth of the change That gripped a nation in rifle-range Of fifty thousand pale-faced boys Ignoring all the stench and noise That filled the townships, villas, farms And biting dogs, drumbeats, alarms That punctured life and barged ahead And made my father shake his head.

You could’ve just stopped, Mandela. You’d earned your freedom, Mandela.

And yet you shared it out with those who gnarled and pushed and rose to charge And channelled all their panicked pain in dreams of tolerance and calm Not dreams aloft, but even staged upon the rugby field’s crushed grass The world was witness to the change and witness to your sovereign balm And started to believe in you and all the hope the world at large Reserves for wonders, swept towards the Cape whose name began to pass

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Its truth across the land which rose in song and dance and bountiful mirth And fanned the feeling, strong and warm. Your wisdom touched the slow red earth And urged mankind to build the homes for equal souls and bridge the cleft That murderous picks had struck, creating races crude and poorly traced Upon our sense of right and wrong and black and white, with nothing left To give us any reason to rethink on what our lives are based. And I am sure that secretly, we never thought that death could strike You down. Our future: Eden? Hell? Our fate now left for us to make.

Natasha Walker

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