Skip to main content

Poetry: The Police are Coming by Keamogetsi Joseph Molapong

The Police are Coming
by 
Keamogetsi Joseph Molapong
+
Look about you
And be wary of them
They are coming in uniforms
Stained fresh with the blood of a young
Man they had just murdered in full public view
In cold blood with no remorse nor respect for life
+
Watch them come
In numbers, with muscles
Filled with hate and disillusionment
Armed to the teeth by the taxpayer and
Paid from state coffers bled dry by police
State machinery, ready to insult, maim and kill
+
Forget about Chapter 3
Strip yourself of all human rights
Burn your constitution for the police
Are above the supreme law of the country
Remove Article 11 from basic police training
Institute fear and hopelessness in the community
+
The police are coming
Criminals and civilians alike
Are running, scattering into silence
Current and currently axed lovers and wives
Crippled by fear, by government-funded guns
Taking aim, spitting fire, piercing flesh, fast-tracking death. 


This poem was first published on Facebook by Namibian poet, Keamogetsi Joseph Molapong, on the 3rd of December, 2019. This is an original work. All rights reserved by the author/poet/originator. Follow him on Facebook: Keamogetsi Joseph Molapong.   

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Children's Story: The Sleepy Owl (Zulu Folklore)

Zulu-speaking people ( Amazulu ) belong to one of the largest cultural and linguistic groups in southern Africa. There are an estimated 12,5 million Zulu-speakers currently thriving in South Africa, Lesotho, Zimbabwe, Swaziland, Malawi, Botswana and Mocambique with the largest concentration of people in South Africa (approximately 10,5 million). The word iZulu means 'heaven' and the word zulu means 'rain', if translated into English (Amazulu means 'rain people'). The  Amazulu is not a homogenous group of people and consists of different clans who had settled in the mountainous and hilly rural areas of northern KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa. This cultural and linguistic group is patrilineal and had migrated in a southerly direction along the eastern coast of Africa from the 9th century onward. According to notable archaeological finds, they initially came from an area in modern Cameroon. The largest of these clans was established by Zulu kaMalandela around 170...

Children's Story: The Crocodile's Roll (Aboriginal Folklore from Australia)

The oldest human genome outside Africa can be found in the Aborigines of Australia. Scholars estimate that the ancestors of modern Aborigines migrated from Africa more than 70 000 years ago after the earliest human remains discovered in Australia were dated and found to be approximately 50 000 years old. Aboriginal tribes in Australia, similar to African nations, are very different from each other in terms of genetics, customs, cultures and languages. These tribes had evolved into separate and distinct social groups (or, nations to be precise) in isolation for thousands of years so that by the time contact was first made with Europeans, 250 distinct languages were spoken on the Australian continent. European settlement caused a collapse in Aboriginal population sizes. Three years after the arrival of Europeans on the continent, a smallpox epidemic decimated healthy Aboriginal populations causing massive depopulation. The systematic massacre and genocide of Aborigines during colonia...

Book Review: The Griekwastad Murders by Jacques Steenkamp

' 'And on this Christian holiday, Good Friday, the whole of South Africa became aware of the existence of Griekwastad. It all started when a fifteen-year-old boy named Don Steenkamp sped into town in his father's white Isuzu double-cab and screeched to a halt in front of the town's almost deserted police station. It was shortly before 19h00 when Don jumped out of the vehicle, dressed in black rugby shorts and a T-shirt, and ran into the station's charge office covered in blood...'' As a creole of African and European descent myself, Griekwastad ('Griquatown' in English) is a place of immense historical significance. Although South African history books still refer to them as 'bastards' (persons of multicultural heritage), the Griquas had been among the first of many groups of creole peoples to abandon European Dutch society at the Cape of Good Hope and, under the leadership of captains, migrated further inland to free themselves of coloni...