Deluge in The Midlands
Skin color is our most obvious identifier. It is the marker of segregation. Black indicates a Bantu education, unskilled laborer, and shanty towns. White alludes to property ownership, geographical mobility, access to healthcare… SUPREMACY.
Do you pass the pencil test?
A Rainbow Nation, built from empty-promise handshakes. The crowd cheers, “freedom at last!” We must no longer cry for our most beloved country, as the oppressive regime has fallen.
Our differences don't separate us but bring us together. The past is but a distant memory, while democracy rules the day. Freedom fighters grin with their distended bellies, while our hanger pangs groan louder.
Nothing works anymore.
Sewage-lined streets, corrugated iron houses, sinkholes that grow and grow with torrential rains that cannot be stopped, as the unmaintained infrastructure crumbles by greedy hands who grab and grab and
Why does freedom feel like drowning?
Heads bobbing to and fro, like apples in a tub. Spectators filming the disastrous show. Disconnected from their humanity – heads, or tails? Oppressor or liberator? Two sides of the same coin.
About this poem
A reflection on the recent devastating floods in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa and the role that the history of the country - from Apartheid to Rainbow Nation - played in the fallout from the disaster.
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"Deluge in The Midlands" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 1 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem/153120/deluge-in-the-midlands>.
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