Tap-Tapping
Rough, wet winds
parch my agonised face
as if salting the wound of
……………………… Bulhoek
…………………..Sharpeville
……………….. Soweto,
unbandage strip by strip
the dressings of Hope;
I wade my senses
through the mist;
I am still surviving
the traumas of my raped soil
alive and aware;
truths jump like a cat leaps for fish
at my mind;
I plod along
.. into the vortex
of a clear-borne dawn
by Mafika Gwala
from Jol’iinkomo
publisher: AD Donker, Johannesburg, 1977
Sharpeville: At a peaceful protest against the Pass Laws in 1960 at the Sharpeville Police Station in the Vaal Triangle, 69 people were killed and 180 injured.
Soweto: At a march of high school students protesting the imposition of Afrikaans as an official language of instruction in black schools, 23 students were killed.