African Unification Front
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Link: 50 Years of Bitterness
January 30, 2006
POETIC TRIBUTE FOR VICTIMS OF NEOCOLONIALISM
February 20, 2007 marks the 50th anniversary of the establishment of neocolonialism in Africa. The poem is a tribute to victims of neocolonialism, and to the people who struggle to end neocolonialism.
BROKEN SHIELD
by Kashagama
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For more than a thousand odd years
the footsteps of my motherland
have been staggering, forced, uncertain
Yet having never lost my strength,
I led in the struggle,
I marched in the columns, and I excelled
Yet now still, along that old road
are fallen Africans
vexed, mourning and dying, in hardship
Men and women crying silently into the dust
of another savanna drought,
with no hope of salvation, no succor
All because this confounding order
now engrosses our lives,
all these fifty long, weary, dreary years
In bewildering storm, or in sombre wind,
I endure in solitude
my tears now are my only treasure
With the sun setting, I stand alone
by my broken shield
on some ancient ruin, some graveyard
Only now at the reckoning of disaster
have I found out
that it is not easy, to simply die
END
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