Dzidziso isina ruomba
Rwendo kusarudzo akakwenya zvichida kashanu
Jana nhasi kuparura rwechimurenga
Kushirikadzi dzisina chekupakura
Nhasi dzotsinhira nesimba rederere
Uku dova regukurahundi riri banga
Kutsoka dzizere man’a
Written jointly by Chinofunga Ndoga and Tendai Gakanje who both are human right activists with ROHR (Restoration of Human Rights Zimbabwe) Yorkshire branch
Our Experience
July 21, 2011 by Webmaster · Leave a Comment
Acts sanctioned by none but you
Acts known by none but you
Acts of deaths witnessed by you
Acts of darkness commanded by you
Acts unkind, evil and unforgiving
Mischief approved and common to you
Mischief paid art in your covert world
Mischief uncommon and disapproved
In the overt world we reside
My capture!
My demise!
His abduction!
His disappearance!
Her torture!
Her callous murder!
Their arrest!
Their incarceration!
Our trial!
A travesty!
Our experience!
Painful and horrific
You gain from our pain
You locate relief in our grief
You count victories in victims
You!
I hate your success
Achieved at the expense of our sorrows
Where is justice for our experience?
My captor still haunts me
His abductor, still roam the streets scot-free
Her murderer still kills more
Their policeman still acts with impunity
Their prison officer continues to deny them food and medication
The intelligence officer unintelligent
still extracts information under duress
The judge remains tribal
His verdict partisan and poisoned
In Zimbabwe, my country
Alluta continua!
Written jointly by Chinofunga Ndoga and Tendai Gakanje who both are human right activists with ROHR (Restoration of Human Rights Zimbabwe) Yorkshire branch
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to HAT News
Mr President
July 6, 2011 by Webmaster · Leave a Comment
Echoes of discord reverberate
In the vicinity of animosity!
The music of hate plays
To the audience of its victims!
The hate-filled morons strings
The violins setting the agenda of humanity!
Slaughtered human flesh gives taste
To the buds of the cannibals!
Without free freedom
Tensions abound,
Brutality consolidates!
Spears sharpen!
And daggers are drawn
For what,
Whose war?
In this sweet democracy!
In this remoteness and emptiness
Of free movement
Hymns and rhymes of dissent dwell!
Recitation long curtailed!
In this bankruptcy of humanity
Human blood from the canals of
Slit open veins flow!
Washing away the records of mischief
Into the oceans of history!
In the Goromonzi palace of torture
A bird of peace languishes!
With a battered soul
And a determination
To expose the junta for what it is!
In this dumbness and deafness of society
The rule of man takes over that of law!
The noose tightens
On the throat of freedom
And with it freedom disappears!
Weeks on end
Soldiers miscount the numbers
Of a plebiscite in dispute
In the shrewdness of autocracy
Souls and emotions are chained!
To the whip that restrict!
Self emancipation!
Written jointly by Chinofunga Ndoga and Tendai Gakanje who both are human right activists with ROHR (Restoration of Human Rights Zimbabwe) Yorkshire branch
Home unhomely
June 17, 2011 by Webmaster · 2 Comments
Brutal acolytes sustaining
Politicians scheming
Greedy and unethical leadership
Blind and docile followers toil
Fractured dissent sleeps
Multiple silent lips talk
Wailing widows
Hungry crying toddlers
Raped pregnant sisters
Armed militant brothers
Toiling moiling mothers
Jobless penniless fathers
Homeless displaced
Starving pensioners
Traumatised lot
Laughing hyenas even
Media parroting propaganda
Courts discharging injustice and injunctions
Unyielding securocrats
Empty barracks
Armoured tanks in motion along Samora Machel Avenue
Hungry soldiers with loaded machine guns parading at Stodart Hall in Mbare
Empty camps
Police in the neighbourhood maintaining disorder
Riot army in gear
Some on horse backs, some in Mercedes, others on foot
Running and leading the marathon of violence
Sweating and swelling eyeballs in the fog of teargas
Coward innocents
Listening to the music of gunfire
The hapless and hopeless taking-in asthmatic breadths of gunpowder
Broken homes, broken bones, missing limbs, hurried burials
Roaming, restless spirits, unappeased
Mobile phone farmers, exiled labour
Exported skills, vegetables overgrown, earth unwatered, barren lands
Empty silos, unpacked shelves, specified companies, unsellable minerals
Swindled banks, worthless currency, unfed stomachs, morgues overflowing
Countless graves, meaningless consoles
A nation in mourning
A nation at war with dear self
Our home unhomely Zimbabwe
Written jointly by Chinofunga Ndoga and Tendai Gakanje who both are human right activists with ROHR (Restoration of Human Rights Zimbabwe) Yorkshire branch
What a mess!
April 15, 2011 by Webmaster · Leave a Comment
Pains and bruises sing me a lullaby
Constant fear caresses my soul
to a night of unwanted intimacy
Marital injustice unsanctioned
My bed is wet and unbearable
Verbal vomit, the culprit
Please wake me up!
To join you at the breakfast table
of promises and lies
Sweet coffee of mental trauma
Served sharp and crude
by a monster I vowed to love
Till death do us apart
It’s a three course lunch sweetheart
Politics, patronage and propaganda
Served with slogans and rhetoric
and washed down with red wine
from the vineyard veins of our rivals dead
No sweet heart!
Please order me
Human rights, democracy
and political pluralism
I dread my supper today
Censored news
Served raw by my husband‘s favourite chef
I like a balanced diet not this palate
Hunger, spare me tonight
It’s long before breakfast
Night falls and hope slips away
My love belly is hungry, angry and beckoning
Please fill me up, but the diseased diet
drips with acid shared by all in the women‘s league
Singing and dancing at the vigil tonight
Singing and dancing to the tune
of abduction, torture and murder
Whistling and ululating to the rhymes
of rape and romance
Thumping and clapping to the sounds
of hate and revenge
Enough is enough
I long for peace and progress
I long for harmony and happiness
I long for freedom
from this shame of a marriage
When will priceless love ever be mine?
Maybe an escape….
Is the answer
Human rights abuses visited upon a spouse married to a politician within a tyrannical dispensation …………………………………..
Written jointly by Chinofunga Ndoga and Tendai Gakanje who both are human right activists with ROHR (Restoration of Human Rights Zimbabwe) Yorkshire branch
Citizen
November 9, 2010 by Webmaster · Leave a Comment
By Vimbainashe Mangoma
Citizen of Jericho merry core
Tainted bliss what a missed – conception
After all are we not standing on the same ground
Breathing the same air why then the hatred; why then the torture
I am a citizen of the world and of a country rooted in its midst
Childless; mindless; tight-less; needless
Somali-tally the deaths
Congolese mail the tale
Zimbabwe count the pennies
Sudan do not be cunning
United Kingdom wont you try me..
Seeker; meeker, weaker is that what you think?
Is that what you know?
I challenge you to rally!!
Behind my fatal cause
Continue to abuse and muse me and you will see
Citizen of the world indeed
How long shall I wait for your acceptance;
And expect the tenancies
Vimbainashe is a volunteer Community Reporter and co-editor of HAT news based in Nottingham. In July 2009, she graduated in BA Honours Mixed Media Textiles design at De Montfort University Leicester. Her most prominent work called ‘Child of our time’ was exhibited at the 2009 Graduate show at the same university.
Jilted Wilted
October 29, 2010 by Webmaster · Leave a Comment
By Vimbainashe Mangoma
What have I done wrong in this here life?
Jilted, tilted, wilted before my time
Dumped, dragged with shame in flames
No call; no scream; just in waiting and equating…
To laugh and cry in isolation
Punishment of the highest order
Imprisoned with no crime
Guilty?… before the jury decides
I’m innocent!!
If family do not know you, what makes you think, tick, kick, be slick and nick!
They are not going to care or bare, tare or dare
He are not going to care for a rare mare
Pack and go; Drift and stay
Which is it?…Confused?…on the borderline you are!
Like a hungry stomach you churn not knowing when you will eat
No bounce or ounce ready to pounce
What is it you want? Why cannot a man be involved with you and evolve
Not get too suspicious or malicious about intentions
Just enjoy the date without relation, elation or correlation
Analysing, tantalising everything…
Regret? Lament?
Elation builds with trust confined
Hear the plea in desperation
Fear not in serenity, there is a remedy…
A gentle-man will be…
In these tropics, a blessed soul to worship you
Sure as the sun shall rise on bended knee he will need
Groom of doom; Bloomed and pruned
Stability with control; Patience with grace
Waiting in worth
There is a man who treats you well; Rings you if I can tell
Makes you feel special …intentionally?…who knows?
You do not have to run around like a mongoose
Lose your cool like a goose feel trapped like a mousse ready for the kill
Like the old fella! What a killa…? You learn to think! Quick!
Why men cannot work you out… like a trout?
See how nice guys always finish last? It is a must!
There is no need to say much,
When things are right, they are tight!
Why bother the dead? When they are resting, nesting, questing for heaven’s door,
Forever on that hurdle;
To seize the moment you do not want to
I guess I will never know!
Vimbainashe is a volunteer Community Reporter and co-editor of HAT news based in Nottingham. In July 2009, she graduated in BA Honours Mixed Media Textiles design at De Montfort University Leicester. Her most prominent work called ‘Child of our time’ was exhibited at the 2009 Graduate show at the same university.
Father
October 29, 2010 by Webmaster · Leave a Comment
By Vimbainashe Mangoma
Father
Man, gentle-man
Reasonable and fair
Cherished, but perish with relish
Hold me up; pull me down
The heart that is, once hurt, will strike me down
Protect me if you will, through shield and bow if you will
Secure me; appreciate!
Respect and Trust in Thee
Your blood and strength I am!
Survival and oh stamina
Endurance to stand against what may
Like the quiet moment before that tide draws those memories away
Will I take that opportune time and not drift astray
Build and plan a foundation
For the history will be foretold
How daring oh caring that man
Cherished, but perish with relish
That man gentle-man oh my father be
Vimbainashe is a volunteer Community Reporter and co-editor of HAT news based in Nottingham. In July 2009, she graduated in BA Honours Mixed Media Textiles design at De Montfort University Leicester. Her most prominent work called ‘Child of our time’ was exhibited at the 2009 Graduate show at the same university.
Mother
October 29, 2010 by Webmaster · Leave a Comment
By Vimbainashe Mangoma
Mother
Protect and care
Nurse and remove the tear
The wounds of yesterday still linger
The burdens still hover
You leave me to grow
You leave me to learn
Hold my hand why don’t you?
Cover me and nurture
Don’t leave me to impede
Shut me out from Ignorance
Teach me why don’t you?
Men approach like roaches
To torture, to rupture, why suture?
The flesh is weak, but the heart be strong
Almost wrong but carry on
Be cautious, nauseous!
Oh mama, why?
The world untold, incalculable too
But the drama mama, still unfolds
Oh cover me why don’t you?
Vimbainashe is a volunteer Community Reporter and co-editor of HAT news based in Nottingham. In July 2009, she graduated in BA Honours Mixed Media Textiles design at De Montfort University Leicester. Her most prominent work called ‘Child of our time’ was exhibited at the 2009 Graduate show at the same university.
Y Nhai!!
October 29, 2010 by Webmaster · Leave a Comment
By Vimbainashe Mangoma
The “child of our time” in my generation
The core of aberration in the 21st century…
In War and famine, drought and flood,
Oppressed, repressed and depressed,
Unfairness, hungered and thirsty,
Exploited, used and abused,
Injured or mistreated!
In money one can be spoilt,
Uneducated in life skill driving to suffering morally
Confused but reasoning
Educated but academically weak, we seek to let knowledge drop,
Making us all wise, powerful, punchful and untamed.
Talented, respected and undeniably effective…
Useful, efficient and prone to succeed!
Zimbabwe like any other country in this 21st Century,
Thinking the country is above the rest? What a mess!
Individually, we have a role of educating, cultivating and enlightening
The African child, but the Zimbabwean child, though the child in and of our time.
It does not matter the blush or breed; Creed or deed
It is instilled as a student of the arts,
Upon reflection in the absence of what is good,
That, that which keeps us all motivated and knowing and learning
Is at the root of my inscription!
Children the window to a nation’s triumphs and troubles
The reason behind my inspiration!
Vimbainashe is a volunteer Community Reporter and co-editor of HAT news based in Nottingham. In July 2009, she graduated in BA Honours Mixed Media Textiles design at De Montfort University Leicester. Her most prominent work called ‘Child of our time’ was exhibited at the 2009 Graduate show at the same university.
