Demoncracy '93

Should I stay or should I go?
We ask ourselves today.
Where and how and what about home,
Or should we stay in Africa and pray,
For peace and love and dollar's loan,
And go headlong into the fray?

Is war and peace bound in leather?
Or is it our skins at stake?
From day to grey and burning tyres,
No stressless orgasm to fake,
Like banknotes and political liars,
Who pull on democracy's brake.

Will liberators become demons?
Once they usurp the throne.
Economy ruined through inflation,
And no-one willing to loan,
Van Riebeek's head for immigration,
Before we're suicide prone.

Should we buy coiled razor wire?
And join the national neurosis.
Three-fifty-seven sawn off pit bull,
To calmly address the prognosis,
Of fascist khaki's who threaten to pull,
Me to the depths of morosis.

How to escape the mindfield?
And re-rail the runaway brain.
The need to live and love and lust,
Is the way I focus my train,
Of thought on our stained red dust,
And S.A. writhing in pain.


This was written in Pretoria, South Africa between July 1 and August 23, 1993 - a year before the country's first democratic election. We were all hopeful about the future, but there was also an undercurrent of uncertainly. It was clearly the end of the Apartheid era, but was the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB - the ultra-right wing Afrikaner Resistance Movement) going to plunge the country into civil war? Would the ANC, PAC and Inkatha rip each other's hearts out? Would the new government ethnically cleanse the country of pink people? Would foreign investment vapourise and the country implode? Would there be food in the stores? Would there be blood on the streets? Would there be a future?

Man - it was a violent, crime-ridden and stressful time, but we all tried to to keep optimistic and to live our lives like there was no tomorrow. A lot of us were also asking ourselves whether we should leave the country or not. For me this was a tough call. I had moved to the UK to escape the Apartheid regime in the late 1980's and returned on the unexpected death of my father in 1990. I loved my country, but I had also tasted the world, and I liked it!

This was a late night piece, fuelled by whisky. Obviously bitter about the past, battling with the present and questioning the future.

Cheers MAlfaRK ©