Amandla Ng’Awethu

My blood mixes with Indian ink and African beats

For a heart that speaks about a time that has gone

I hum, I dance, I drum

From left to right

From right to wrongs, I sing my songs

Of my ancestors emancipation, 

For their upliftment

For their spiritual enrichment

Nestled so tightly in our DNA and backbone

Like a serpent it was coiled and cloned,

But it unfurled and stretched through the spine of time

And now it runs deep, through our akashic blood lines

Like a roaring river of a family’s legacy

We come born with an awakened Kundalini

Invoking the universal law of oneness and equality

So we cry power to the people

Amandla Ng’Awethu

From Delhi to Soweto

 Yebo, my slave ship sailed from Indian shores and landed on that salty South African coastline

Where masters rode on horses of superiority

While we waged through the mud of hard labour and slavery,

But little did they know that we had 2 of the most powerful leaders in our lineage 

You see both Mandela and Mahatma walked this land building bridges

Both fought for our freedoms with the deepest humility

I tell you now my motherland is not only the cradle of humanity.

She is also a living, breathing alchemist who had the audacity to create these blood diamonds etched with hearts of gold

They made us priceless – so we can no longer be bought or sold

Yebo, we come from this stock

Where the powerful shaka and shakthi forces combined and locked

And within 100 years

We embarked on a safari from slave to trade

From ignorance to being well educated

From the hate of apartheid to a rainbow nation of the brave

From Capetown to Soweto we cried,

Amandla Ng’Awethu

Amandla Ng’Awethu

You see in this one line held reveries of justice and freedom in the hands of a majority who were whipped into insecurities

So we said it again and again.. 

Amandla Ng’Awethu

From Durban to Soweto 

Yebo, my roots mix with Indian spices that scatter on African soil

We planted seeds across the savannah plains and fertilised it with hope

Where sugar cane plantations rose from working the land with our blistered hands

Now like Thoreau, we build fortresses on top of freedom foundations

To our castles in the sky

Breaking through shackles and chains on ankles of apartheid

Where Justice ran knowing she will only be met by a mirror of acceptance

Yes, we were confronted by the truth and reconciliation commission

The repentance of people who committed brutal crimes, but were not sentenced

Where mothers faced their son’s murderers with heavy hearts and forgiveness

They held a nation on their shoulders with this act of unselfishness

You see this is the only way we could move on and create a future for all of us

Archbishop Tutu, himself laid the table with Ubuntu

So we could start eating on clean plates of tolerance.

Serving up only that spicy taste of righteousness

Drinking no expectations

And devouring desserts of resilience.

See it wasn’t through violence that we won our freedom

It was through sanctions and an internal justice 

Of never giving up on a dream

Even if it meant standing up to authorities to remain in a first class seat 

Or being incarcerated in Robben Island’s prison for 27 years

And holding that space with only a single belief and an unwavering purpose for freedom

27 years.

Could you do it?

I really don’t think I could..

But I can only be the best person now

This I feel the least I should.

To make Madiba, Mahatma, and my parents proud

To honour them

And those who have fallen before them

For the sacrifices they all made for me to have a better life.

So here I stand before you

A being of consciousness, compassion and peace 

To uphold the truth, value and verve they have instilled in me. 

So that I can have Freedom in my eyes

And Dreams in hand

From Sydney to Soweto!

 

Amandla Ng’Awethu!

~Pranishka