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In this moving poem, a school teacher weeps for the children who were killed on June 16 1976.
They died, he says, and were buried with today’s hope. The current regime is a puppet of the engineers of the 1953 Bantu Education Act to keep blacks poor and slaves of white masters. There is purported equal education and unequal opportunities.
My bones and ashes lie heaped in total waste,
Piled up significantly in ruins of my untimely fate.
My eyes gouged out not to see good deeds,
Filed on my illustrious life-changing feeds.
The world shook, tabloids buzzed when I died.
Wow! To date, it’s as if they completely lied.
Trapped quietly under monumental armour,
Wrapped gracefully with glitz and glamour.
Family gloats, bystanders giggle in silence.
Happily my siblings marvel in ignorance.
Death of youth is collateral gain for the enemy.
Depth of my agony is not felt by my frenemy.
Four decades ago, then regime certified me dead,
For it was indeed engineered two decades prior.
Hail of bullets flew indiscriminately and was dire.
Pain registered. My siblings and everyone heard.
Bureaucrats boldly stand guard at my grave,
Ensuring that revenue is collected in my name.
Fought, died and buried, cannot read or write.
Lost, crushed, yet celebrated even by the right.
Left living lifeless largely because of vain glory.
Felt forty-six years on by youth in the land of folly.
Seed was boiled, planted and watered, but in vain.
My youth, my gain, my pain, my death all in vain.
Ngwane, originally from Mpumalanga township in KwaZulu-Natal, is a teacher at Jacob Sefako Primary School in Limpopo
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