(for Lefa Walter Pela)
Mind Your Own Business:
Cry wolf in a sheepskin
The Comrades Marathon
Is a foxtrot to nowhere
Newspaper man in slow motion
Gone too soon
He was taken out
Because selling news is a form
Of selling out
A satchel full of tabloid
And broadsheet hardcopies
Of a dying industry
With newsrooms turned white elephants
Pet walk a morning jog of sycophants
Media subscription
A digital conscription
From Black Wednesday
To World Press Freedom Day
I Deride What I Like
Break free the Spirit of Percy Qoboza
Malombo in Sam Mabe’s African Dashiki
To disguise
A journalist’s character assassin
Each fullstop a bullet wound
Festus sent a nextdoor country’s citizen
To the gallows
Left to hang high and dry
Because her own country couldn’t campaign
Against the death penalty
Nor file an urgent application
For a Presidential Pardon
Pain is pain
It knows no colour
Class or creed
From land grabs to mighty sea robbers
Heidi Giokos is now a Kaiser Chieftain
The mayoral chain
A deadly sea of piracy
UP THE BUCS and praise the Boks
A diplomatic wash of hands
Not expropriation or repossession
But reconquest of aboriginal lands
It was soccer fans
Who almost took my father’s life
With a knife
And he lived long enough
Not to tell the tale
And yet
Never lost his love
Of the beautiful game