It was the indefatigable
The legendary Adebayo Faleti
In his book “Idaamu Paadi Mukailu.”
Narrated in vivid drama-poetic manner
A catholic priest in a local community
The same kind of burden
That the Blackman had to and is still carrying
From Zuma in the Peter Abrahams “Mine Boy”
To the writings of W. E. B. DuBois
To the protest marches of Martin Luther King Jr.
And the prolonged apartheid in South Africa
To the “Fire in Soweto” by Sunny Okosun
And “Black lives matter.”
Even the age-long inhuman slavery
To the balkanization of 1880
The Blackman has had to endure
The “Beast of no Nation” by the legendary Fela Kuti
Then the travail of the cerebral Adeshina
In his attempt to galvanized Africa
And indeed, the Blackman
From the shackles of dropdown doles
In the name of charity
To keep us in perpetuity
As providers of primary goods
Whose price and worth are dictated to us
But its byproducts in return
Sold to us at exorbitant prices
To keep us in poverty and want
As our income can hardly march our expenses
In a cartel that we are mere onlookers
Even with our appetites manipulated
To desire the dainty of our primary goods
Of which we contribute nothing into its final production
Yet we strongly long for it.
To the undermining of our capacity
As people capable of worthy intellection
People that must be constantly dictated to
With the subtle support of our own
Who for the simple alluring
Of the usual filthy lucre
Collaborated to sell us, their ‘brethren.’
Constantly to our common oppressors
Who spares nothing
To elongate the binding chains
That bend our backs
In pitiful surrendering
To the manipulative twist
Of an unfair and unjust systems
In conspiratory harmony
In a similitude of colonization
Like the French hegemony
In its Francophone domains
Making us even doubting our capacities
To manage our affairs
Without ‘external’ invasion
But we must rise
Out of this dust
No matter how long
It has been gathering
And sustaining
To pull away from us
The burden imposes on us
By a skewed world
In favor of our oppressors
But nonetheless can hardly do
Without our contributions
Even if they undermine or deny it.
To take our destiny into our hands
As no one will take away
The burden of the Blackman
Except by the Blackman
Rising in the unity of purposes
Harnessing our inner powers
Dealing with saboteurs amongst us
And taking our rightful place
For the survival of the Blackman
Whose backs may have been bent.
Due to long oppression and molestation
But which must be straightened up.
And stand strong forever
For the time has truly come
To wean the Blackman
Of the burdens unpalatable
Borne for too long
It is time to take away
The burdens of the Blackman.
©TheVillageBoy 2020
