Tutsi Tears ~ Zamasomi Msomi

Mother Run, Father seek refuge, Child be still lest they hear and kill you

There! There!-Listen

Sounds of cockroaches, they say

Find, Catch, Kill

Use Knife, Rifle or Machete 

Kill all Tutsi blood

Mother, Father, Child

Mother Run, Father seek refuge, Child cries what wrong have we done

What sin have we committed?

Oh! Won’t you spare us 

We promise not to be tutsi anymore 

We promise to be good 

We will change our skin colour

We no longer will be light

We will even grow short

Just like Hutus

Spare us, Spare us

God save us 

Love protect us 

World hear us 

Rhwanda spare us

Mother Run, Father seek refuge, Child be still lest they hear and kill you

Neighbours kill neighbours 

Friends kill friends

Streets flow of blood 

Blood of you and I 

I and you

Tutsi and Hutu

Hutu and Tutsi

Lying bare in the streets of Rwanda 

Lies bodies of unloved and forgotten 

Men, and women, aunts and uncles, cousin and… 

me

As I lie on the dusty ground 

Feeling the rays of the scorching sun

I yell for 

Mother to Run, Father to seek refuge, Child to keep still lest they hear and kill her

© Somi Msomi 



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Matriculant 2009
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#SayNoToXenophobia ~ Zaynab Asmal

Stop passing the buck
because the paper is frayed
and the face of a dead man
and the glory of a dying species
is fading into dust.

Stop playing blame games.
1994 didn’t happen
by saying it’s the government’s fault
Do not preach to me education
while you tax knowledge
and churn out policies
about science and math
forgetting about the history
of the tongues that built this land.

South Africa is a graveyard of paper boxes
a land divided into gridlock
boxes getting smaller
lines getting thinner
until everything is grey
but not black
Black is the colour that accepts all
White, red, yellow –shade doesn’t matter
because black embraces all and holds them within
not letting go.

you say you’re Black but you call him Nigerian
you say you’re Indian but they are Memen
you’re called Asian but you’re actually Taiwanese
(no one else in the world sees you
as anything but South African
when your family has roots in this land)

We are not one
We are not Africa
But South Africa
a colony
in a sea of black
that refuses to join the flow.


© Zaynab Asmal


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Matriculant 2013
***