The Drunk's Sober Words

By Ndaba Sibanda

Those men and women are too drunk
to care about you and your plight.
Do you still believe they'll save you?
If you do then this is no longer a plight.
Like no action, it's none but your blight.
Can't you see they drive fancy cars?
At times brazenly on potholed roads!
Their destruction is far from being over.
When will you wake up from delusions?
If they wanted or could: you'd be better.
They wine, dine, drivel, stagger or fly out
whenever it suits them and their coterie.
They say your problems come from far. Far?
Did people from far destroy your factories?
Are they the ones who're heading parastals?
Non-performing agencies and hefty salaries?
Your problems: no jobs, no power, no growth.
Do they've the slightest idea of fixing these?
They lie and tell you they're fixing them.
Or will it take them 202 years to fix them?
They use big geysers and electric heaters
and whirring fans but you don't have
electricity and jobs and enough money
to keep your sober heads above water.
You call me drunk, yes, you're right!!
But I'm much better, I'm not drunk
with clout and corruption and frills.
Pan-Africanists, they claim? Yes.
How can you even believe that?
Such evil denial is genocide itself.
The black dead must be sobbing.