Mandela's Tie-and Dye Fabric

 Mandela’s Tie-and-Dye Fabric

 

‘Your Worship I hold you in high esteem,’

Mandela addressed the White Court,

A stern Drakensberg,

Oversees vast vista’d plains,

Of shrubs; gorges; rivers; flora and fauna,

A beautiful homeland,

To the tongue clickers,

Gravity defying leapers,

Fleet of feeters,

Boers and Anglo settlers,

All and others,

It was such a time,

To expose the violence,

That apartheid unleashes,

To those labelled non-white or Africans,

Violence begets violence,

A churning Charybdis,

Devouring pleas for clemency,

Drowning reason and decency,

Tentacles of diabolical hubris,

Bind both African and White,

In a tumbling tackle,

Of justice; love; wrath; hate; war; plunder,

With no side victorious,

Until at Ithaca,

All attacking and war-weary sides,

With bloodied swords and smoking guns,

Which they would have used,

To wipe down each other,

Letting loose copious blood,

Flowing over plains,

Forming bloated and grotesque naumachiae

Cringing on banks left soggy,

With ripped arms and legs,

Strewn all over,

As far as the eye can see,

Entrails in place of sod,

One standing on the Drakensberg,

Gazing at hopelessness,

Of the sport,

No chance for flight and escape,

For all who partake in the bloodletting,

This was the apocalyptic destiny,

Bleak and desolate,

Of the murky plains of Africa,

But Mandela said, ‘I am prepared to die,’

While in the White Court,

With the stern “Your Worship,”

To whom he instructed,

In the civic lessons,

The reality and diverse nature,

Of a ‘tie-and-dye’ South Africa,

In which freedoms prevailed,

And all were treated with dignity.