Next thing you know its 1985 again. Guns blazing in these city streets, these souls have caught fire.
This time it isn’t your mother, father and neither is it your sister running from the police.
This time it’s you. The yellow tanks are chasing you. Roaming the streets; crushing your dreams.
They are waiting for us to express our freedom of speech, just so they can put a bullet through you.
Say they had sufficient reason. Say that what you’re doing is an act of treason. Call you a terrorist.
We are not trying to overthrow the government! We are saying we are trying to get an education.
So she can take her siblings to school.
So he can buy his mother a house.
So they will be better.
But here we are, sitting at the table, unable to afford what is on the table already.
I am not mad that you have money, I’m livid at the fact that you think that we all come from deep pockets, where education isn’t a major concern.
These tuition fees you don’t think twice about are the same fees her mother is getting hospitalised for; the same ones she’s praying for a miracle for.
We aren’t terrorists. We aren’t the enemy.
We just want an education man. We just want to learn to better ourselves.
And I am not trying to blame the past on these problems, but damn, it’s got you all so selfish.
You forget really don’t you?
That not even 30 years ago you were in our shoes.
Fighting against oppressors, now we are fighting for an education.
How many people have to die?
We are a generation that will not be silenced. We are bombs.
Momma told me that I can be whatever I want to be.
Today I told her that I’m a bomb waiting to explode.
I am a rocket waiting to take off.
I told her that I am a lantern waiting to light up the world.
Here I am, a non-explosive bomb, a failed rocket ship, an unlit lantern; just because you won’t light my candle.
Don’t you know we shine brighter when we all have lanterns to carry?
When we all explode at once?
When we all reach for the stars?
© Omhle Duma
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Grade 12
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