of all the easy-on-the-eyes men, why, of all the well-heeled ones, why, of all the well-lettered intellectuals, why, of all the many men with overflowing bank-balances and hefty wallets,
why him?“.
She tells them that the day she met him, that day when they laughed and when they spoke,
that day when they stood under a leaking bus-stop in the torrential African rains,
my fingers caressing your bare back, paints words of a love so true,
while in your eyes swirls the raging fire,
the passion of my pen scalds my being entire.
i may scribble a poem or two, my meagre words unable to convey,
the roaring furnace you have lit within me, this dervish who in a daze does sway,
sprinkling kisses on your honeydew lips,
feeling the desire raw and thirsting, from my soul to my fingertips.
your love has breathed life, awakening my slumbering heart,
to beat in tune with yours, scribbling oaths to never be, ever apart,
for a love so complete, so warm and so achingly deep,
was once only dreamed of, in waking moments of thought, and in the cauldron of my restless sleep.
these odes, these poems, are but scribbles on the parchment of shared time,
tucked away in the recesses of memory, finding solace in each paltry rhyme,
assailed by the nettles of days gone by,
emotions billowing like smoke into the bluest sky.
the passion of my pen is the mirrored reflection of your love,
the stroking of your hair, your head on my chest, the bounty we were blessed with, from the heavens above,
when days were humid and sultry, the nights torrid, bathed in the essence of need,
when all subtlety fled, as our hunger growled, wanting it all with an insatiable greed.
i recall those years of long ago, when we danced in tune with each heartbeat,
when our bodies lay entwined, the sweat dripping off flesh, as our minds and souls did effortlessly meet,
i can never forget those minutes that stretched into hours, in the Johannesburg thunderstorms, drenched in the cooling African rains,
your body my canvas, from the tips of your velveteen mountaintops, to the savanna of your rolling silken plains.
i recall every one of those minutes, i can hardly forget the warmth of your breath, as we sighed in unison, skin upon blazing skin,
and were i to never love again, were i to never savour that ecstasy, i will forever bask in the paradise of those memories, and i will constantly keep you, for you will always remain my heaven within.
the meandering stream of our lives, hopping over smooth pebbles, jarred by jagged rocks, swirling down maelstroms, surfacing in placid waters, washing up all our carried detritus on tiny islands of hope, coursing through the rapids of fate, just as life races on, a perpetual journey wrestling the still waters where hope itself, seemingly lies in state.
our lives, the daily grind, the cacophony of the banal, remains afloat, seeking solace in between crevasses, welcoming the temporary respite from the incessantly onward flow, stripping our skin bare, raw wounds inflicted by the flotsam and jetsam of these travels, the travails of the many masks we wear, seeking respite in the promise of an endless sea, always just around the corner, where for once, we may moult our broken skin, and where for once, we may just be.
the rising and ebbing of the tides, leave us gasping for breath, a seemingly endless cycle of the distant beacon of joy, only to be blinded by the silt, as the stream rolls on obliviously, leaving us gasping for breath, a twig snapped in two, while destiny offers us the mirage of a peaceful shore, only to be struck by the truth, the tired realisation that the stream rolls on, evermore.
we are torn apart by the ceaseless wear and tear, the infinite tears lost in the deluge, our fleeting laughs, our vanishing smiles, being pounded against the silence of the shallows, with hope a seductive vision, prodding us to go on,
to not sink in the greying depths of despair,
while we continually fall for the falseness of the charade,
grasping for just another breath of life affirming air …
uBuntu – The South African philosophy that espouses that all beings are inextricably linked to one another = I am because we are
The Journey …
Travelling along the myriad pathways of this life, side-stepping thorny obstacles, at times clambeing over jagged rocks, our bodies wracked and bruised.
May we pick up the crushed flowers, the dead leaves scattering these alleyways, may we reach and assist the countless souls, lying by the wayside, forgotten, torn, abused.
May we be human, more humane, less oblivious, less cruel, may we appreciate lives that stagger, inert, broken, inching forwards wracked by coughs, held back by pained starts.
May we be kind, more embracing, of the other, may we be less cocooned, less self-absorbed, with true respect,
knowing that all the world, and all living things, are nothing when alone,
for we are of this earth, a sum of all its infinite parts …
you hardly spare me a glance, as you walk past me, a fellow human, whom you pretend not to see.
you send me off to fight your wars, remaining comfortably ensconced in your ivory tower, while in the trenches i shiver and cower.
you dock my pay if one of your fine bone china cups gets chipped, you withhold my wages, while the hunger in my children’s stomachs rages.
your children still call me ‘boy’ or ‘girl’, though it was i who changed their diapers long ago, but it is still i who is the recipient of the epithets that you and they hurl and throw.
you use my body for your carnal desires, throwing some money on my stained bed, you use me as a lifeless rag, then dispose of me in a rubbish bag.
you claim to be so liberal, so open-minded and progressive, yet you ignore my plight, you discuss poverty in your chandeliered rooms, as i prepare some beans in the dim candlelight.
you send your cheques to greenpeace and amnesty, perhaps to assuage your guilt somehow, as you refuse to pay me my overtime due, your body weighed down by heaving jewellery, in red and white and blue.
you see me building your glittering skyscrapers and your glitzy malls, my hard hat pummelled by stone and dust, as i eke out a living, my dreams turned to rust.
you walk and you talk, leaving me to scrounge in the garbage heaps, for scraps of this and that, while your stocks and portfolios grow ever more fat.
i am invisible to you, to your posh and pompous kind, and i doubt your humanity will be ever anywhere to find.
you see me, a festering sore on your manicured lawns, a piece of dirt living on ‘charitable’ rations, and the first to bear the brunt of your police batons.
i am human, though only barely just, easily interred, once my purpose has been served,
i am human, though only barely just, as i get buried in a heap of dust.
With President Nelson Mandela & my fatherWith the National Poet Laureate of South Africa Comrade Mongane Wally Serote
An absolute honour and truly humbling that the National Poet Laureate of South Africa Comrade Mongane Wally Serote chose to write the Foreword to my book.
The following is the Foreword by the National Poet Laureate of. South Africa …
Foreword by Professor Mongane Wally Serote.
National Poet Laureate of South Africa.
Afzal Moolla-The Poet.
Afzal Moolla is a South African poet. He is a prolific poet. He grew up in a family, which, for the longest of time, was part and parcel of the liberation struggle in South Africa. That is to say, he grew up in a family of freedom fighters.
You can imagine what he had to listen to at an early age. He absorbed it all. His folks are elderly now.
“…These were the early 1970s, and this story was told to me by my parents, who themselves were recently arrived political exiles in India, having to leave South Africa, where my father, Moosa “Mosie” Moolla was arrested along with Nelson Mandela and 156 others in the infamous Treason Trial of 1956…”
He is young, living in a country which emerged from the depth of one of the most cruel political systems ever imagined by human beings. Nothing will allow Afzal to forget that, even as he may have been a toddler when that system was at its most vicious.
And now at his adult life, some among us, seek to destroy a dream of the people. We must scrutinize what this poet says about those who do that: who are they if face to face with OR, Madiba, Che, Fidel… that they can ony be traitors.
As we read what Afzal says, we will also be engulfed by a progressive and humane attitude of human life. Afzal is of Indian origin, a South African, whose young mind was shaped by a people who had to strife with everything possible to be human.
The combination of poetry and prose in Afzal’s rendition, walks one in very rough terraine, not sparing one. He calls all this, his work:
STRUGGLE EXILE LOVE
“…As we walked through the tombstones of the war soldiers from all parts of the world, my father explained how apartheid was a scourge like Fascism and Nazism. He explained how the world had joined forces to fight Mussolini and Hitler, and why we too had to fight against apartheid….”
Even when the worst of things are explored in this work, the optimism of the spirit from the poet, is still the basis to seek hope; to search for a way out of pessimism. A rare skill indeed. He can express anger, or despair, even cynicism, as also he seeks an anchor in the strength which resides in the hearts of human beings. And therefore Afzal, refuses to let go of the humaneness of human beings.
He then braves the challenge by referencing the reality of the beings of struggle as the names of the freedom fighters spread throughout the pages which carry the weight of his writing.
There is too much pain in Afzals work, but equally there is love, there is joy and as said there is hope. Afzal is a skilled artisan of things made of words that is, of things which become the writing on the wall: a history, a culture tempered in the freedom struggle.
“Searching.
Searching,
in the debris of the past,
scraps of casually discarded emotion.
Searching,
in hastily trashed yesterdays,
an inkling of moments flung away.
Searching,
in heaps of rubbished words,
that tiresome sigh of defeated thought.
Searching,
in the layers of moulted skin
the wilting self that once was true.
Searching,
in the reflections between the ripples,
for the whispered pangs of roaring desire.
Searching,
in the blank eyes streaming endlessly,
an echo of the faintest sigh of new life.
Searching.”
There is no letting go here. Life is pursued relentlessly, with the knowledge that life itself is a struggle for life and living; but also, knowing from having lived in struggle and among freedom fighters that there is no alternative to freedom. That want and that knowledge is insatiable; it is only satisfied by the reality of the manifestation of the spirit, meaning, everything which is liveable and defining being free.
(About Timol-a name we know because its reality teaches about the extremes of human cruelty, but also about utter commitment to that unbreakable particle of the human spirit which forever defines, and forever seeks freedom. )
“today their lies have been consigned to the dirt.
They tried to murder an ideal,
the revolutionary spirit that burned bright in your heart,
they tried to silence you, not knowing your memory shall never depart.
They tried to kill you,
but they will never silence you,
for you live,
through the expanse of our land,
mingling in the rivers,
standing high upon our shared revolutionary hill,
they tried to silence you,
yet the hunger for justice will never be still,
they tried to silence you, but the memory of your martyrdom never will.”
—————————————————–
March 21, 1960 – Sharpeville
They shot you in the back.
The oppressors lead tearing into muscled flesh. The flesh of Africa.
They massacred you in Sharpeville, in Soweto.
Today we remember you.
We salute you…”
There is an isiZulu saying which rings of finality in its utterance, expression and thirst for freedom: si dela nina e ni lele (we envy you who have fallen). It is a battle cry. It is an expression of love and hope. It is a yearning which is insatiable which knows and aligns with the purpose of life that living life is a definition of Freedom. When Afzal names the freedom fighters, and as a series ofthese names emerge and spread throughout his poetry, it conjures that feeling and that understanding.
That is what defines “Dr Martin Luther King Jr. (1929 – 1968)
You had a dream, of pastures of peace,
where children of all hues mingle like rainbows.
They silenced you, yet your dream
resounds louder still,
in pastures not yet of peace,
where children of all hues mingle like rainbows.”
———————————————
” The Wind Carries his Name
They shot him down,
to silence a man of flesh and bone.
Even as the bullets tore through him,
the wind carried his name.
Far across the weary fields,
high above the stubborn peaks,
over the blood-soaked streams,
the wind carried his name.
They shot him down,
to silence a man of flesh and bone.
Yet the wind carries his name,
to you and to me,
to them and to us.
They shot him down,
but his name resounds,
as it floats on the breeze.
And,
still they try to shoot him down,
to silence us all,
to stifle an ideal.
But the wind cannot be stilled,
and the wind carries his name:
“Che” “
Afzal is here, with that ‘…they…” referring to the international oligarchy, that “ …small group of people,,,”, who with mighty force control everything at all cost, against billions of people, indeed against humanity, who now, as Afzal warns us are pushing all of humanity to the precipice of a final and last war, if there are no thousands upon thousands of “Che(s)” who must emerge to stop them.
The world, humanity is once more, as the saying goes, that “…history repeats itself…” faced by a great possibility of an international arms race. The oligarchy’s objective: to amass all the resources of the earth for the “…small group of people…” They are relentless.
Afzal’s work of poetry traverses human feelings fearlessly. He is the child of Freedom. He is the adult nurtured by a series of names of people who carried the blood that has been spilled, whether in the street, or in the veld, or in the houses, on the bed or finally ill of health and having to bid a frail life farewell-nevertheless, life which sought to express the will of millions who have been trampled upon by the international oligarchy, “…a small group of people…” who will stop at nothing to burn the world and is content, turning it into ashes.
Afzal keeps “…Searching…” because he was brought up and grew up in the struggle for freedom. He searches, seeking to find that particle, which no one can break because it resides in spirit-it knows peace, it knows being secure, it knows the meaning of freedom. It is profound in it being simple.
To OR: Afzal says:
“And then finally off to a new dwelling in a faraway alien land,
reeking and drenched in a foreignness so blatantly bland,
never fitting in, though always dreading being shut out,
singing paeans to hope scribbled in the sand.
You left your country, your home, your very own place of being,
you fled, into exile, far away from blinded eyes so unseeing,
and you held to a principle within, and you stood resolute,
till the shadows felt themselves in shame fleeing,
We salute you! And all like you, and the so many countless more,
into whose flesh the tyrant’s sword so cruelly tore,
We salute you!
You who fought at home and you who left to fight,”
To his mother, who is an experience and voice of many women in South Africa, on Our Continent, and of the world; Victims of the powerful “…small group of people…” in the world, who tear it apart.
true and filled with the generosity of spirit that defines you,
may your dreams soar into the boundless open skies,
and may the benevolent fingertips of time and of fate,
brush away any tears that should fall from your gentlest eyes.
May you forever stand tall,
may your head always be held high,
with stoic dignity.
May your past experiences be the stepping-stones that mark your path ahead,
may your heart be your guide,
your blazing beacon of wildly enthusiastic hope,
may your wishes be simple,
and may they come to be,
filling your life and your moments,
with joyous bliss,
where you truly feel free.
Free of the weight of yesterday,
free of gnawing doubt,
and may your being be infused,
with the softest serendipity,
so that you may spread your arms,
and to the heavens shout,
I am free,
I am me,
at long last,
I am standing tall,
never again to bow,
or to fall on bended knee.
This is a wish both simple yet elusive,
a wish that only you can make true,
by simply being,
the kind,
warm,
gentle person,
that is you.
———————————-
In Your Eyes
As another day recedes,
enveloped under the shawl of night,
allow me to drown,
in your eyes.
Moments fleeting,
fickle hands of time unseeing,
allow me to seek solace,
in your eyes.
The trodden path littered with each shard,
regrets this heart wishes to discard,
so, allow me to seek refuge,
in your eyes.
I have walked through twisting boulevards of life,
seeking simple joy, away from desolation, strife,
so, allow me to find peace,
in your eyes.
In your eyes,
I find,
the gentleness left behind,
away from superficial smiles,
away from fatigue of the walked mile.
In your eyes,
I feel,
at home at long last,
your love caressing away the restlessness of the past,
stepping out of the shadows to embrace pure contentment,
though a bit player,
in your life’s theatrical cast.
In your eyes,
I touch,
the flame of promise radiating through your loving light,
that is why,
I no longer dread,
the vacuum of encroaching night.
—————————————–
What all of these words say, which Afzal has crafted, which we dare not forget, is that we as South Africans, as Africans come from a poetic place, as do all of humanity who come from a “…Paean…” a ululation and praise of the relentless freedom fighters.
Professor Mongane Wally Serote. National Poet Laureate of South Africa
My dear friends and fellow-travellers here on WordPress,
I hope that all dear ones here are well and keeping safe healthy during these harsh times.
I have been well, but have been so busy with work and more work and with house and home things so I’ve been away from this wonderful space for far too long.
I hope to be here more often as I miss all friends and your wonderful pieces.
Do stay well, and my love and warmest wishes to you and to all those loved by you and hoping and wishing and praying that this ghastly pandemic that has wreaked so much pain and grief and untold sorrow to so many may be soon less virulent and deadly as it has over the past year and a bit.
Hugs and love to all from Johannesburg in springtime South Africa 🤗🙏🏽✌🏾👍🏾❤️🌻
I may be off and on here given the pressures of work and home but my love and thoughts and deeply felt warmth of spirit is always here with my dearest friends and brothers and sisters in our wonderfully close-knit WordPress family
The video of the launch of my book “Struggle, Exile, & Love“, published by the Ahmed Kathrada Foundation and with a Foreword by South African National Poet Laureate Comrade Mongane Wally Serote and a Preface by Comrade Ismail Vadi.
I am the winds whispered to by the ancients of the rock-hewn churches of Lalibela,
the winds that have heard the murmurs of the ancestors at Great Zimbabwe.
I am the winds resting at Mapungubwe, I am the winds of the Upemba, I am the winds above Giza,
I am the winds of the Djenné-Djenno, I am the winds of the Songhai,
I am the winds of the Numidia,
I have breathed across these lands, these lands have breathed into me.
I have witnessed colonialists carving up my continent,
I have heard screams of mothers and children,
I have seen the slave-ships set sail,
I carry the memories of my people manacled, and bound in chains.
I have heard the shrieks of my people, I have seen my lands plundered,
I have borne witness to genocide, to notions of racial superiority, to oppression, to tyranny,
I have caressed far too many bruised bodies, I have dried far too many tears.
I am the winds of Africa.
I embrace the hope my people carry, I feel it thud-thudding in their veins,
I encompass my lands bathed with renewed spirit each dawn,
I encompass my lands infused with hope each morn,
as my Africa, our Africa, wraps us in her dazzling multi-hued, comforting shawl.
____________________
– Lalibela is a town in the Amhara region of northern Ethiopia. It’s known for its distinctive rock-cut churches dating from the 12th and 13th centuries, which are pilgrimage sites for Coptic Christians. Carved out of rock, the subterranean monoliths include huge Bete Medhane Alem, and cross-shaped Bete Giyorgis. Many are joined by tunnels and trenches, and some have carved bas-reliefs and colored frescoes inside.
– Great Zimbabwe is an ancient city in the south-eastern hills of Zimbabwe near Lake Mutirikwe and the town of Masvingo. It is thought to have been the capital of a great kingdom, although which kingdom is not certain, during the country’s Late Iron Age. Construction on the city began in the 11th century and continued until it was abandoned in the 15th century. The edifices are believed to have been erected by the ancestral Shona. The stone city spans an area of 7.22 square kilometres (2.79 square miles) which, at its peak, could have housed up to 18,000 people. It is recognised as a World Heritage site by UNESCO.
– The Kingdom of Mapungubwe was a medieval state in South Africa located at the confluence of the Shashe and Limpopo rivers, south of Great Zimbabwe. The name is derived from either TjiKalanga and Tshivenda. The name might mean “Hill of Jackals”.
– Lake Upemba is a lake in Bukama, Haut-Lomami District, the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
– Giza is an Egyptian city on the west bank of the Nile, near Cairo. The Giza Plateau is home to iconic Egyptian monuments, including 3 tall pyramids built as royal mausoleums around the 26th century B.C. The largest, the Great Pyramid, is King Khufu’s tomb. The Great Sphinx is a vast sculpture of a man’s head on a lion’s body. The Solar Boat Museum displays a restored cedar barge found buried near the Great Pyramid.
– Djenné-Djenno is a UNESCO World Heritage Site located in the Niger River Valley in the country of Mali. Literally translated to “ancient Djenné”, it is the original site of both Djenné and Mali and is considered to be among the oldest urbanized centers and the best-known archaeology site in sub-Saharan Africa
– The Songhai empire, also spelled Songhay, was a great trading state of West Africa (flourished 15th–16th century), centred on the middle reaches of the Niger River in what is now central Mali and eventually extending west to the Atlantic coast and east into Niger and Nigeria.
– Numidia was the ancient kingdom of the Numidians located in northwest Africa, initially originating from Algeria, but later expanding across modern-day Tunisia, Libya, and some parts of Morocco
clutching, grasping, holding onto, gulping down, hungrily, each breath, every breath, fearing the onset of the years, the splinters of time, embedding, piercing, this moment, the very now, numbed by repetition, embalmed by trepidation, of tomorrows yet to dawn, suspiciously sifting through the strands of greying hair, seeking clues, the because to the whys, the slow mornings, restless nights, jabbing reminders, as years, decades, scurry, scamper, flee, feeling it all slipping away, standing, immobile, stilled by the implacable sentinels at the doorstep, these immovable sentries, concealing the door, that leads to today …
Scribbled Verse 
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