If Nehanda could one day walk down First Street And watch our sisters like crazed animals snarl for beer And hear their untamed laughter If she could watch our women Shamelessly trade their body wares on pavements While they trudge the streets like vampires at midnight If she could watch them bear sons and cast them down the drain Date millions of men and marry none I'm sure Nehanda would weep and seek cultural redress.
If Mapondera could pace down the same street and Watch homeless toddlers play house Jobless youths loiter aimless in avenue bars Hear the intoxicated laughter of glue-crazed children Hurtling debris through cafeteria windows If he saw tattoos, ill-fitting garb, queer hairstyles And watched old men swing to modern grooves And heard them curse and swear in foreign tongues Mapondera would wheeze and raise a war chant.
If Chaminuka prowling down Chitungwiza lanes Counting the wretches and homeless beggars Sees a family of twenty tucked into one bed-kitchen-live room Saw fathers desert their families Children pass elders without a word of greeting Teenagers sporting oversized pregnancies Mothers bitching in front of their sons Doubtless Chaminuka would pass out with mortal shock.