In our land                                                                        Our hands pound on drums                                                              In our land                                                                            Our hands pound on drums to produce sounds                                                     Lovely sounds, African sounds

                                                                       Magically powered sounds                                                Vimbuza! We don’t worry                                                          As drums we marry                                                          When sick, the bucket about to kick                                                                                          We get together,

Under the full moon of Africa in Lundazi                                                                                           When owls their masters please                                                                      We pound drums for their souls                                                  

We sing songs of Africa                                                          

We clap our planks strong and solid with hands                                           We feel the rhythm in the depth of our inside                            The Vimbuza sick dance to strength                                               Breaking the grounds of Africa                                                             Tearing the calm of Africa                                                    The Vimbuza song break their bodies                                   And break their sickness                                                                        They lose their sickness                                                                      We too feel the rhythm                                                     Deep in our inside                                                                                  The music races in our inside                                                                            And cleanses our blood                                                                                From all sicknesses….                                                                        In the African music, is natural healing                                               The lovely music of our singing. 

DAY OF RECONCILIATION

This is the day of reconciliation                                                 Let us sit down this day,                                                                                           Slice a single hour from this day                                             For a discussion on our reconciliation.                                        Let us on this day, our day                                                              Let us pass across the demarcation line                                                           And any rhyme that I spice with in this line                        Should be but to reconcile us today.                                                 Now as we sit repairing our brotherliness                                      Remember what we agreed on love                                  (That was before our sires were sent above)                          That never should we kill brotherliness. 

GRIND THE OBSTACLE

I say grind!                                                                                The sinless souls                                                                              Grind the grim faces                                                                         Created to crack our voices                                                    Grind, son of mama                                                                                           These devil-faced souls                                                                    That try to take truth away from us                                                          These sons of the rotten part of the earth                              That call us sons of bitter death                                               Just because we were born in Africa                                       Grind their souls, Africa!                                                              

I say grind!                                                                             I hate to hear their bare voices                                         Voices lacking Jesus’ blood                                                 Yet the same blood that they lack                                           They use to crack our voices of verve voicing victory                                     I hate to hear them overrule our voices

I say grind!                                                                                                                                             Not anymore on these soils                                                   Should I see these devilish souls                                                 Call Mama Africa’s sons                                                The sons of bitter death                                                       Where are you, African daughters?                                                                         Where are you, the blood of Africa?                                           Where are we? The blood of Africa!                                                                              These tyrants have no time given  to govern anymore                                                                These tyrants have no time granted                                         To grab from us our greatness.                                               

Africans, where are you?                                                        Why allow men of death                                                               To fuel your fury                                                              So that you fight your fellow brothers?                                                                                         And you say yes? Yes! Why?

I say grind!                                                                    Grind, child of the soil, grind!                                               Let the smell of your blood be smelt                                     The smell thickened by the sun of Africa                                                                                  Tearing the soils of Africa as a sword                                     Strike with Africa’s sun, with Africa’s moon                                                                  And grind all vices that veil your life                                                From truth, from reality and from life

I say grind!                                                                     Grind, souls of the soil, grind!                                                     And show thy God-given energies                                                         That nobody is allowed to question                                                       For they can act on him                                                                     I tell thee sons of Africa                                                   Grind!                                                                                                    And none shall ever touch you again                                         I pledge all my support for you. 

 

THEY SHOT MY BROTHER

He lay dressed in hot bullet wounds                                                    Gunshots from cops swallowed him                                       Blood ran over the earth                                                             The blood ran like rain into the veins of the earth                                               My brother’s blood.                                                                               They shot him                                                                                                                            Right on the forehead they shot him                                                                         A single shot on the forehead grounded him                                                                                                            They shot my brother.                                                                  He was my pillar                                                                                                               The only giver of love unto me (after the demise of our parents’ souls)                                                                                   But him – key witness against a cop – a killer                       They targeted his fore heard just because of that                             My brother’s patriotism earned him his life.                                                                       He lay dressed in hot bullet wounds                               Gunshots from law enforcers devoured him in a single gulp                                                                                                                  His blood drained into the earths’ bowels                                 His life burnt black as in a blast furnace                                 My brother departed for eternity. 

GOODBYE

We have reached the end of the road                                And must now go separate ways                                                  We shall still remember the days                                      That we passed through together                                  Now as we go separate paths of life                                           Let us deep our thoughts deep                                              Into our memories of yesteryears                                             As our tears gushing with pain                                               Stream down our cheeks                                                       Let us taste these salty tears                                         Streaming down our cheeks                                                  Let us listen to the lamentations                                          Of the voices hidden in our inner beings                               Now that we are becoming separate                                                           In thought and in fault                                                                In death and in birth                                                                       In the worth of our mirth                                                      We shall live differently                                                            I shall live a life unsupported                                                     By the roots of our guiding friendship                                           A life of tears as wide seas                                              That I have to cross to reach the lands of happiness                                    And the worlds of bright laughter                                                 I shall dip this pen of mine                                                       In my flesh to where I feel the pain most                                   It is then that I shall scribble verses                                                     That are punctuated by the blood shed                               Shed as we were being separated                                               One’s soul and flesh from the other’s                                 Verses that are consonated by the breaths                            Our breaths beaten, broken and brought to a standstill                                                                             I shall dip my fingers in your wounds                                                              And so shall you do too in mine                                                   So that we share our pains together                               Dear, as we say goodbye to each other                                                         Let us not hide our tears for each other                                 Let us not hide them away from each other                         Let us cry together                                                                 As we pray that we meet again                                     Therefore, ‘till we meet again                                                         It’s goodbye. 

CHIHANYA – VULA (In the Forests of Africa )

          Blood clots on these lands                                                          Heavy, black clots of blood                                                      Blanket the earth on African fields                                            How do seeds then germinate                                                      And break these clots of blood                                                                     To give to us food and drink?                                                       I heard a harsh voice                                                      Whose echo showed me grim pictures                                         Is there a future in this bloody Africa?                                             The forests of Africa are covered in blood.                                 
 

BLOOD ON AFRICAN SOILS

The scorching heat of the African sun                                Bruises these soils-                                                                 The brown soils of Africa                                                            Trees are dry                                                               Ashamed of their shaded leaves                                               Left naked, open and unprotected                                                             Yet, sounds still steal our eardrums                                                         Sounds kill our strengths and our energies                                                 Sounds of gunfire don’t die down even when we walk wandering                                                                                        Wading in the swampy Africa                                                  When rains tell us to forget about the dry season                   When the green of life returns back to life                            Still we hear sounds                                                      Deadly, deafening, devilish sounds                                        Who are we, poor souls?                                                      To clamp down these devilish acts                                             I saw a bullet, a red, hot bullet                                                            Rip through the forests of Africa                                                                It was a fat bullet                                                                       But it swallowed a thin innocent man                                                                                                                        In the forests of Africa