3,000

What do you know about laws –
You who fall asleep instead of making them
Mouths wide open,
Legs spread-eagled,
Hands on bellies,
Bellies full of rich 3 course meals; threatening to pop out of 300-dollar shirts
Eyes tightly shut;
Dreaming, dreaming of more money to steal, more houses to buy, more women to fuck
A siesta at 3 o’clock…after a tryst with your 3rd mistress
Fat cats.

You who dare arrest a woman
For buying a 30-shilling loaf off the streets:
An unthinkable crime!
Guilty: she, of wanting to feed her family
And the hawker, of peddling goods and struggling to survive
Illegal, you say
Selling goods without a license
Chaotic too:
Law and order are necessary in a civilised society!
A fine of 3,000 shillings for the crime of buying a 30-shilling item:
An amount that she can only dream of ever blessing her eyes upon,
Her salary for 3 months,
Not nearly enough to feed her family of 13 for a week,
Fools.

Yet you wonder why
Her sons grow up to steal from you, kill you
Her boys, they had so much potential
Could have replaced you and done a better job too!
Farmers, architects, artists, leaders: their future down the drain
Their euphoria short-lived, when they realise that you are all words and no actions
Where are the 300,000 jobs that you promised to create if they voted for you?
They still have no access to free education
So they join gangs and attack you
After all, a young boy is restless and can remain idle for so long
What other choice is there?
Felons.

Why are they so unhappy, when the economy has grown by 3%?
These 30 million people, living from hand to mouth
The rich getting richer, the sick getting sicker, the prices soaring high
Why would they care about abstract concepts like the GDP?
You congratulate yourselves and award yourselves by increasing your salaries
(Big men need big cars)
Draining an overstretched public reserve
That is replenished occasionally by your foreign friends
But nothing comes for free: your friends have their conditions
They will rape your women, rob you, run you out of business and erode your culture
Only then can you appreciate the extent of their generosity, their ‘aid’
They laugh at you behind your backs, you know
Your so-called friends, they laugh at you
They have many words to describe your country,
A country teetering on the edge, like a drunken woman balancing on high heels
Threatening to fall over any minute.


– All rights reserved. ©, N.L., October 2007