If you are looking for someone who actively supported apartheid

You will always be faced with a quiet room

The sudden hush of the crickets who rapidly flick their eyes around the room

Desperately hoping somebody else will claim responsibility for that one

 

For a new nation to be born out of the ashes of the old one

Something needed to die

Systems, structures, attitudes and behaviours…

 

“Even words?”

The fifty-eight year old man I fondly call “boy” might ask

As he takes a break from tending my garden to eat his lunch off that special plate

I keep to the side just for him.

 

But if there were never any racists

Besides, you know, Verwoerd, and maybe Steve Hofmeyr and that Afriforum crowd

If no-one can be found who actively was racist in those days

You know, before the rainbow nation swooped down and enveloped us all in her wings

Then there surely is no need for a death.

 

And things can continue just the way they are

Which for most, cough, white South Africans,

Is exactly what happened back in ‘94.

 

The rich get richer

The poor get poorer

And hey diddle diddle

We all fall down

 

But at least we’re free of racists.