African Renaissance

It makes no sense whatsoever
Not to me
Not to the boy selling
Grass brooms and feather dusters
At ten o'clock on a Tuesday morning
While a handful of his age-mates
Practices the five-times table at school
He's probably not thinking of a renaissance
As he deftly employs his number one marketing tool:
Public guilt

This idea is "whatever"
It doesn't mean renewal
Not to me
Not to the dry-skinned woman
At the rural bus terminus
Who vends shriveled fruits and roasted peanuts
To the distracted masses that cram themselves into overloaded buses
Whose very existence is a hazard
Her voice rises high above the buzz
As she offers cheap nutrition to an undernourished population
How's that for an "S.M.E?"
Does she fit into the dream?

Translate it!
Break it down for me!
I just don't understand it.
Neither does my seventy-five year old grandmother
No one explained it to her
The day she woke up early and hobbled twelve kilometres
At the promise of "food aid" which she was denied
On account of having "made noise"
For the overpaid paper-pusher dispensing it
An entire village turned away
Hungry and empty-handed after a twelve hour wait
Did not dream of the dawn of "black consciousness"
That night.

African Renaissance? What is it?
Some kind of evanescent idea
That is tossed around at conferences
At five star resorts by clueless men and women
Who have moved mountains
To educate their children in the "first world?"
Is it a vague but verbose press statement
That dissipates when they kiss each other's greasy cheeks
And exchange stiff embraces before boarding
chartered airplanes back home?

Bring me our visionaries
The great thinkers of our time!
Let's herd them together and lock them in a room
So they can hash it out
And come up with a pretty definition
Maybe in a poem!
I, on the other hand
Will be out here in the real world
Hacking my way through this jungle
Wading through the gunk
Stacking my chips and building a life
Doing more than just surviving.

I, too, once dreamed the dream
But now I am awake
Wide-eyed and blinking
Wondering as I look around me
How many times and how many ways
Does an African have to die
Before he is "reborn?"

© Sandisile Tshuma MMVI