Sarafina

16/6/19

Jim Crow was just Apartheid with a Southern twang.

Day of the African Child sounded innocent enough,
give kids a day to be at the center of stuff.
Renew calls to fund education,
develop their minds with arts & recreation.
Last Friday though I became the learner
by realizing the day was much much worser.

Soweto South Africa 1976.
The learners had had enough of the tricks
played on them by the Bantu System,
what they wanted was educational freedom.
Freedom from being treated as 2nd class
by racist laws from a government so crass.
They stood up, spoke out, and paid a horrific price.
176 officially dead for the police didn't think twice
about shooting down a school aged learner
who did not want to learn in the tongue of the oppressor.

To educate our learners, we showed Sarafina,
a musical turned film about the uprising had them laughing like hyenas.
The dialogue was in English and the sound was low,
but the grade sixes and sevens, they should know
what's going on, but with each violent scene
I saw laughter and smiles pointed at the screen.

I told my colleagues of my sickness at the sight
and their response was "Why are you so mad? You too are white."

Through all of it, I'm not mad, but just sad to see
a general lack of human empathy.