Idioms and proverbs have been in existence amongst our people before the introduction of the writing

system as a form of teaching, guidance and knowledge transference. I use Idioms as a basis of my themes and make connection with the modern period that our people find themselves in.

– Tshepo Mosopa

MENO MASWEU I

My eyes are dead like the sunken eyes of a skull

I victimized victim to victim

Collecting my keep for it is owed to me

By your flocks – the Mzanzians

You in whom I am disowned

With lack of employ

Bang my gun

I take

Ban my gun you wish

Think you can assert control over my destiny

My deeds

Do you?

Heh?

Forget you not that you raised the monster in me like Kgori said forgot you to give I skill to survive

You preach pedagogy for the selected few

So I shall be friends with you, laugh at you

While I cut you from underneath

And put you in a state of paralysis never experienced ‘afore

While the world watches you in shame

I crime the monster shall discourage visitations unto this land

I keep zapping at your possibility for I not alternative not have

But there is a monster that haunts me

Is this a sign of guilt?

And when son/daughter ask

What daddy does for living

What shall the criminal say?

 

The land of molalatladi has sidelined me;

that is why this goes.

© Mmutle Arthur Kgokong 2009

Kgori

I had searched for a livelihood in your bosom

I went from pillar to post (like they say) in search of your sap

Trying to eek a livin’ o Mzanzi whom us all were promised

And now I bow in defeat

Of your Class divisions

Artificial Mzanzi

School went I but drop of nectar of what you ooze I am denied

Hunger contort my body into a suffo’

cat

And survival tactics lack I.

I envy the northern ebony

Who grin in a skill

Who sweat by his own inspired efforts

For your former steering committee molded the present by ignorance Mzanzi

Forging my poverty by forecast and preemption

Entrapping me by denying me skill

So slave I

Are we to blame them or the present power controllers?

let us drop the question mark for no one cares, is there?

But if one out here cares there is a glimmer of hope

If one out there keep us in mind then there is a chance

But all of us careless; Then doom descend

Until then there is no strength to rise from the gutter

That has become the commonplace of the destitute

Acute it is now

For iron shap’n iron

As black downpress black

And Meno Masweu is justified

O the blackgeoisie give us hope in your dominion.

Will you?

Skill us

So that we can bake our own bread

© Mmutle Arthur Kgokong 2009

‘The work of the poet is easy, like a sponge the poet observes. In interrogation s/he oozes personified

impressions’

– Mmutle Arthur Kgokong