Who you calling a Settler?

 

Professor Mamdani;

I am a settler and a native,

I am both,

You don’t speak,

Of us,

The marginalised shame of this continent!

How can a settler become a native?

You ask,

When even natives become settlers in Africa,

And settlers are migrants and trekkers,

Of various colours,

Including Black,

And Brown

Is there a New way?

You ask,

For civil and customary right to be erased from memory?

Am I a settler,

With nowhere to go?

I have a way,

I am the way,

I am the New,

The Un-bordered,

The Un-divided,

The Un-colonised,

The Un-ethnic,

The Un-everything,

Which is everything!

I cannot hold either of the rights of which you speak,

My right is that to life,

And humanity,

Long denied,

Since Slavery, Smuts and Verwoerd,

Lost in the woods

I am the New,
Which can emerge from the old,

From the mixes of settler and ethnic,

Like the Xhosa,

Who know how to mix sources!

We are all mixed here anyway,

And we’re all settlers in some way or another,

Except the Khoisan,

And there’s a bit of him in me,

Am I then the true native?

Or is it Australopithecus?

What sense does all this make?

I am a native of the Now!

A mix of the past,

And my future,

Will be written,

As old words die!

I am free!