Not with a machinegun, but with a pen (in answer to Breyten Breytenbach)
Not with a machinegun, but with a pen
I write this prayer
since Your might is greater than any weapon:
What am I able to tell You, Jesus Christ,
almighty Creator, God and upper Lord,
I who are only an Afrikaner in my forties,
since You know every thing, even before it happens
and there’s nothing that I can teach You.
How my country was taken away
by people who pray to ancestral spirits
(who probably are demons) ,
that a man with more than one wife
sit in the highest chair,
that I still pay taxes
when and where I have a job
and that it is difficult times
and work is very scarce
for a white man.
Would I have to tell about a government
that sings give me my machinegun
and a bullet for a Boer
and kill the farmer,
kill the white
as You know every thing.
That my people were disarmed
by the government
and by barbarians
are hacked into pieces
with panga-blades and axes
like you were sacrificed
and even in death
they are humiliated
by pulling their pants down
like You had to hang naked on the cross,
that women are raped
as if every white woman
is a sex slave
belonging to the hordes
that they still throw knucklebones
and think that it brings them invincibility
and freedom from blame.
l’Envoi
All that I am really asking
is that all of these deeds
and the things that they do, say and sing
go into the cup of Your wrath
and please help
my people and me
to serve You better
that the wide world
(like with our ancestors)
can see Your might and salvation.
[References: nie met die pen nie maar met die masjiengeweer by Breyten Breytenbach. Murder on Eugene Terreblance. Murder and violence on white people.]
poem by Gert Strydom
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The writing is on the wall
Now the writing is on the wall
and with the umpteenth killing
a know leader is dead
and dishonoured in hatred
and now the king ask for tranquillity
as if “give me my machinegun
and a bullet for a Boer
and kill a farmer, kill a white”
has no consequence
and I wonder what he wants to do
with his machinegun
(and at the court
blacks cheer killers as heroes)
or is the plan
to kill us one by one quietly?
Or is he begging for a chance
to let the army loose
on white people?
Is he still too stupid
to read the writing
of another blood river
coming almost unstoppable?
poem by Gert Strydom
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The secret war that is raging in South Africa
The secret war that is raging in South Africa
asks for white blood,
these black people first kill and torture
before they take your possessions.
Incident upon incident I can tell about
where white families have been killed,
just think about the Orffer family
who was killed in Stellenbosch
on Friday 31 July 1994
by black people:
First the trustworthy black maid Sannetjie,
who tried to ward off the attackers with her bare hands
like a Amakeia of days gone,
then the blonde small girl
then the dad and the deaf little boy
and last the mother
were chopped with a axe to death
and everywhere there was blood.
Nowadays the tendency is
to first bind up the head of the family,
the man, to assault him
and to torture him to death in front of his family
and then to rape the women,
even toddlers and babies
and if the women are lucky
they survive
when the criminals
leave with their possessions
and it seems as if the police
do not want to, or are not able to stop this thing
and then it is claimed
that these people kill and steal
because they are hungry, while people in government
sings songs to wipe out whites.
From April 1994 when Nelson Mandela became president
the wiping out of white families is our destiny,
the Afrikaner nation is in the melting pot
we who have an own culture, language and identity,
who cannot become part of the hurly-burly
are killed, not only robbed
but tortured and horribly killed
and our women and children are raped.
Even Eugene Terreblancé
had befallen this same lot
and if this is not a war
that is raging against us,
where we are systematically
bit by bit, family by family
wiped out, and the numbers
are already in the thousands, then what is it?
[References: Klaaglied: Stellenbosch, Vrydag,31 Julie 1994 (Song of lamentation: Stellenbosch, Friday,31 Julie 1994) by Lina Spies. Amakeia by A. G. Visser, Amakeia, Amakeia then and now by Gert Strydom.]
poem by Gert Strydom
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Murder The Government
I wanna see the constitution burn
Wanna watch the white hourse overturn
Wanna witness some blue blood bleed red
I wanna tar and lynch the kkk
I wanna pull and shoot the nra
I wanna pay the lobbyists to kill themselves
I wanna dose the dea
I wanna join the cia (not really)
Murder the government, murder the government
Murder the government, and then do it again.. yeah
Murder the government, murder the government
Murder the government, and then
Murder the government
song performed by by NOFX
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Memory to Eugène Terreblancé at Rooigrond prison
This government slammed a jail door behind you,
caged you in like a animal, locked you behind bars
in the prison at Rooigrond;
when this government took your freedom
a potted plant was your biggest treasure
and the grace that you found on your knees
from the almighty Lord God
and between the prisoners with tin plates,
who were continuously making a ruckus,
they tried to devour your humanity.
In the mornings they gave you porridge,
before prison doors slammed behind you,
in the afternoons again porridge and for dinner pale soup;
but still you are walking through my thoughts,
your splendid poems turn and whirl in my mind
as if they are still keeping you alive
and this government
does not hear the cock crowing three times,
the Son of God was also betrayed and sold.
The barbarians that slaughtered you with pangas
already got bail,
(the one as a child is free from prosecution)
and in a few days your killers
(from Mozambique who brought disorder here)
will probably walk free as heroes into the streets.
By some of your own people despised
you were actually right, your own blood that flowed;
on the hands of black people,
stays proof of it eternally
l’Envoi
and somehow the blacks in our country
has totally lost their senses,
where they rob and decimate
the Afrikaner people and Afrikaner farmers.
[Reference: Rooigrondtronk (Rooigrond prison) by Eugène Terreblancé.]
poem by Gert Strydom
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Two Different People
Two different people
Black people, white people
Black world, White world
A black person thinks different from the white people
White people thinks highly of himself
White people works very hard for his living
Black's are lazy
They don't want to work, they just want the money
You have to work for the money, they just don't get it
White people knows that there are no free ride in life
Black's want a free ride, there are no free ride in life
Nothing is free in life except for the air that you breathe
The white people have to be careful of what they say to the black People
Whatever you say to the black people if they don't like it they will say it Is discrimination
We can't understand them
They have a mind of their own
The white people are loving and caring
What about the black people?
Not a hope in hell
I don't want any part of the black world
The black world is not safe for me
So I rather stay in my white world where I feel safe
We can't trust them
The reason why there is violence in this world is because the black People cause it
Now they don't like it because they have to live with it
We want a safe world for our people
The black people don't care about it because the only thing they know And seen is violence
There is too much violence on TV
They like it
They like the feeling of danger
We white don't like the feeling of danger
The blacks hate the white people and the white people don't like them Either
The white people knows when to shut up
The black people never knows when to shut up
There is why there are always problem with them
They make life miserable for us
The white people will always be a good friend
The black people can never be your friend
They will take everything they can get from you for free
poem by Aldo Kraas
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I will tell everyone
Pull a machinegun, a pistol,
a panga-blade, a knife
and say: “white man give me a reason
to kill you today.”
Rob my cars,
take whatever belongs to me
and even if the police
cannot catch the criminals
and the government looks the other way
as if the robberies, the killings
are not happening
and while I am still living
I will tell everyone, the whole world
about the gangster’s paradise that I live in.
poem by Gert Strydom
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An elegy for South Africa
Weep South Africa
as you are no longer my country
and I live here
as if I am
from another planet
as part of a small minority
in a country where dark Africa
declares murderers as heroes
and act like barbarians
and dance and scream.
At a time the orange, white and blue
streamed proud over you
and people at work,
school to parliament
bended their knees to God
who was their supreme leader
right through hordes
at blood river,
the onslaught of the British Empire
and with God on our side
we would quarter
for nobody and nothing.
Our own culture flowered,
children went through schools
right through university
to distinguish themselves
and you could even leave the doors unlocked,
could make a living somewhere,
the police were a servant and a friend
and we under our own rule.
How many times our ancestors
tried to teach other people of God,
distributed medicine and food
and we even faced
the communists and Cubans in Angola,
till on a day a man
for the wide world a hero,
out of our own ranks betrayed his brothers
and he laid the whole country lame
and didn’t sell it out,
but rather gave it away.
Today incompetents are everywhere in control
of state departments
right through into the parliament,
money is squandered,
a whole generation
through their own choosing
did not receive any school education,
whites are affirmed and impoverished by the law
and criminals and foreigners stream in
from all over Africa
to start a new life here.
Today another Afrikaner son is slaughtered
(one of more than three thousand) ,
what happens tomorrow and the next day?
[Reference: Murder on Eugene Terreblance. General condition in the country.]
poem by Gert Strydom
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The Day They Robbed Me Of My Life (In Answer To Don Mattera)
Black people have got power
in this government that rules,
to sing songs of hatred
like kill the Boer, kill the farmer,
kill the white man
and to sit back in comfortable chairs,
while pillage, rape, torture
and robberies takes place
and then when crime is out of control
to be about it totally amazed
Black people have got power
in this government that rules,
to destroy a lifetime’s career,
years of study at university,
years of experience
of doing a person’s utter best
in moments with affirmative action
and turning lives into nothing but dust.
poem by Gert Strydom
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When times are bad
When times are bad
and I am with my hands in my hair
and black foreigners from all over Africa
overnight becomes citizens
and have more rights as a citizen than me
and affirmative action
puts her claws into my life
then I wonder about justice
and when merit and experience
will ever again apply
where my ancestors Joost Strydom
from Liefenshoek in the Netherlands
as a merchant seaman of the VOC
in 1678 came to Cape Town,
married his pretty well know wife
Maryna Ras who with a horse
could alone ride days long to Cape Town
with whom noblemen tried to have relationships,
where the indigenous zulu-xhosa-pondo-swazi people
are originating from a group
that during the same time
immigrated far away out of the north
from eMbo at the big lakes in central Africa
under the leadership of Nguni and later Dlamini
and then I wonder how
this country rather belongs to them
and they have to have work opportunities before me
and if you now say anything
about the new migration out of the whole of Africa
for which the country’s borders are now wide open
(in such a way that South Africans
must now get visas for Great Britain)
you are seen as xenophobic
and then there are citizens from right over Africa
who become South Africans overnight
attaining more rights than you
who forced by law
get secure job opportunities
and do people from Mozambique murder
Eugene Terreblance,
drug dealers from Nigeria
are caught by the local police
while against your will
you were forced into an army, into a war
still faithfully pay your taxes
when and where you have a job
and the current government
tries to stay in power
while Aids devours its voter numbers
and you as a white man
are despised by the current regime,
are treaded into the ground
while the country are falling to pieces
and then you pray
to Him (the God of the universe) who controls everything
to drastically intervene
rather than rousing people
for a civil war.
[Reference: VOC Verenigde Oost Indiëse companje.]
poem by Gert Strydom
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(Hate Poems) Hate Speech Bafflement
If I sing the killer the farmer
Tune of my liberation is that hate speech?
If the white people sing the kill
The baboon kindergarten lullaby of their
Race hatred is that hate speech?
Your terrorist is my hero
It is an exercise in futility
And no judge can censor what the people
Want to sing
If the people want those who kill
White widows on the the farms
To face the gallows listen to their outcry
If the people want to subject the crass
Racists who racially abuse them let the fools
Taste the law of the jungle of the people
poem by Ngaka Motaung
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Kill All The White Man
The white man call himself civilized
Cause he know how to take over
The white man come to pillage my village
Now he tell me I have to bend over
Oh yeah, kill all the white man
No I dont like the white man up in me
He rape my people as he rape my country
Everything I love and cherish, he try to take away
We will be rid of him, soon come the day
Oh yeah, kill all the white man
Oh yeah, kill all the white man
Oh yeah, kill all the white man
Oh yeah, kill all the white man
song performed by by NOFX
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Night of the long knives
People now believe that if
somebody like Eugene Terreblance
could be killed so cruelly
it awaits every white person
and that black folks are itching
to rob, to chop to pieces
and to dishonour whites
and to rape women
and that the government propagates it.
It is thought that farms and houses
will be stolen with force
in the same way as in Zimbabwe
and many people now want to leave
and go to other countries
to escape poverty
and avoid being forced
into a squatters’ settlements.
l’Envoi
Friends and loved ones of mine
want to escape the night of the long knives
that they get out of the writings
of visionary Van Rensburg
but still the One that could save at Blood river
walks on my side.
poem by Gert Strydom
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An Elegy to Eugene Terreblance
You are gone without a farewell
and like a great De Wet
or De La Rey
you stood single
for your people
to also have
a place in the sun.
When your men went into Bophuthatswana
there was fear in me
that they wouldn’t be able to bring peace there
and would get death for their trouble.
Time after time I have listened
to your electronic Afrikaans poems
about the field, nature
and God to whom
you bended your knee
and the beauty of it
and your humanity
came to lie in my heart.
I was at Church Square
when you on the day of the covenant
read a piece out of the Bible
and prayed for your country, your people
and that God reach out His hand
against the dark might
that takes their humanity away,
but in your sleep
you were hacked to pieces
with a Panga-blade
and a martyr was made of you.
Let dark Africa rejoice
and declare killers as heroes
and reveal themselves to journalists
and the wide world.
Let people interpret you wrongly
as a bellicose person
that wanted to bring conflict.
l’Envoi
I see a honourable man
who wanted to serve his Lord,
who set his people first
and your death plucks through me
and cuts where it hurts most,
as in a way
every Afrikaner is portrayed in you.
poem by Gert Strydom
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My God witnesses every thing
My God witnesses every thing,
the woman crying at night
about the child that she doesn’t get,
the robbers sneaking around in the day
driving away with stolen cars,
the poor living in shacks
who have to live on a paupers wage,
the farmer working in his fields
who goes home at dusk,
the barbarians that assault him later
and kill him with panga blades
and there’s nothing that passes by my Lord
and on His time His justice follows,
His salvation and wondrous deeds unfold
and every day He sets the way
that every one of us go on.
poem by Gert Strydom
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Home invasion
A bullet for a Boer
and kill farmer,
kill a white
still rages on from
the ruling party
where members are singing it
from the age of eight
and in a rural district
a home invasion takes place
in the middle of the night
a male family member
is shot through the shoulder
tied up with wire
bashed with a baseball bat,
chopped with a panga-blade
and before getting to hospital
he is dead.
The woman in the house
is led to a room
where they are tied up
and are raped
and everything valuable
is carried away
And the incapable police
can find nobody
and the killers go free
and are still missing
like my two stolen cars.
poem by Gert Strydom
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The last day
The last day you see the sun is not an illusion,
It's really your last day.
Most people do not even know about their last day,
But you know it.
This day you will die.
Most people do not know about their death,
But you know it.
So many people walk around with a meaningless life
And many people use religion as a mean of quieting their fear of death.
The Lord had mercy on you,
The Lord has told you what is good.
Once you had no identity,
Now you are God's child.
God has mercy on whomever he chooses.
He chose you this way.
Many people are sinners
And many people die without getting past this point.
The Bible clearly teaches that all people have sinned - except Jesus.
Jesus Christ died on the cross for sinners.
You can also believe in being baptized to show obedience,
To take upon you the name of Christ
And to become a member of His Church.
You can go to Heaven
Pure as a white lily.
You still can go to Heaven.
Try to understand what happened to you.
Try to understand your own reasons for doing what you did
And the reason why the Son of God took a human form.
Christ loved you and gave himself as a sacrifice to take away your sins.
'Turn away from your sins and live.'
For you have been called to live in freedom,
Don't choose the freedom to satisfy your sinful nature,
But the freedom to serve one another in love.
It is your last day
Don't be blind this day.
Don't eat anything.
Give your meal to others.
It's a day of prayers
As Christchurch mourns its dead.
Choose the eternal life.
(Dedicated to the people, who wait in prison to die.)
poem by Marieta Maglas
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On a Close-up of Louis Esterhuizen, on His Verse Novel “die onderwaterweg, ” (The Underwater Way)
So tell me Louis, you start your verse novel
of which the story line is very thin,
with a white man lying drunk and silent in hospital
after trying to commit suicide,
with memories taking him back
to events in his marriage with his white wife
who had been a left wing political activist,
where politics makes the marriage crumble,
rather than interpersonal relationships,
were marriages usually crumble
from a lack of communication
and respect for each other?
Where at times he is impotent,
where at times he gets it right,
where he looses her in consequence of a rebellious march
are cut from her leftwing circle of friends,
where she head over heels in the middle of the road
lift her dress; let her panties hang around her knees
where she has sex with a black freedom fighter
(how realistic this may be)
is pregnant with a child for Azania
while children in rags string along after her,
where they again sleep together
and he does not catch AIDS,
she is slaughtered in a pincher operation
or maybe by canister-shot
(again utterly unrealistic)
after which he buries her
along with her black friends.
On visits by a certain Jabula, fall in love with her,
he changes from white to black,
so much so that he takes a taxi to a hut somewhere,
where she is a labourer on a sugar plantation
where she makes love to him, they give life to a child
and I wonder if you want to draw this story
through to every white Afrikaner?
Especially where the main character in a prayer
to the almighty God wants to know
if the AK-47 and famine
is God’s own way of controlling vermin?
A person can easily come to the conclusion
along with the thirst for heroes for the black struggle
and where you write “morning walk”
set against Ingrid Jonker’s poem of the child,
that you view every Afrikaner,
every white farmer killed on a farm,
as plague or vermin,
that God kills through black people,
if white people do not mix with blacks,
as the main character in your story does?
[After Anthony Delius/References: Louis Esterhuizen, “Die onderwaterweg, ‘n versroman, Human & Rousseau, (1996) Kaapstad. “On a Close-up of Dirk Opperman, on the Jacket of his Komas” by Anthony Delius.]
poem by Gert Strydom
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Almighty God, creator of everything (in reply to Breyten Breytenbach)
Almighty God, creator of everything,
let me ask in Your holy name
that the unrighteousness that is happening,
now draw Your attention
that the names, the occurrences, the whole lives
of everyone who is oppressed
become written in Your immortal book
give the opportunity for a life to us, that we also
may earn a living, also may have a place
in our country and are not be trampled upon
by people who want to rob, the little that we have
that we have earned with difficulty
and protect us; shelter us
in your laager, with fire
that You draw around us, around our properties
and let we forgive them,
who are sincerely striving for our destruction,
who do not grant us employment,
are trampling upon our human rights
and let the forces of evil flee away from us,
let evil succumb to Your Godly power
since the whole world belongs to You,
every government, country and kingdom
is under Your sway
and may we remember like our fathers,
how faithful Your Godly salvation is,
may our lives be just as sincere
and may the wide world see us
as people of integrity
but more than this, more than the salvation
that You are bringing,
let we testify about Your endless love,
bend our knees to only You.
[Reference: 7.8 Onse milde God van alles wat soet en mooi is (7.8 Our generous God of everything that is sweet and beautiful) by Breyten Breytenbach.]
poem by Gert Strydom
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That pain exists is necessary Lord (in reply to Breyten Breytenbach)
That pain exists is necessary Lord,
as it purifies me
and the more I suffer the nearer it brings me,
it brings You nearer to me
and at times Your crucifixion is too terrible
to understand, it torments me
to think that mere man
could act so mercilessly, so revolting,
like the deranged could shout and scream
to kill You, Lord
and some of them murderous
leaning forward and jump up and down
and although Your death is a realisation
of many prophecies,
Your suffering paid the price for the lot of man,
I am still lost
in your unselfish love
that demands from Your Father
to leave the perpetrators without reckoning,
the people that were spitting on You,
the people that hated You
and nobody can understand such deep love,
that does not turn around self, or own profit
but your pain and suffering was necessary Lord
and although some turn their backs on You
I beg You to keep me on the right way,
for Your help to unlearn my own conceit,
that is harming our relationship.
[Reference: breyten bid vir homself (breyten prays for himself) by Breyten Breytenbach.]
poem by Gert Strydom
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Submission (in answer to Don Mattera)
I have seen a white old man and woman
turned onto the street,
living in cardboard boxes
with their small white dog
in the new disastrous improved South Africa,
I have seen white people taking their own lives
when black mine owners robbed them of salaries
and there was no job to get,
no living to be made
and they did this
instead of starting to beg.
I have seen white men and women
with university degrees
leaving the country
in numbers that are more than a million
to find a place to have a life
somewhere else in a foreign country,
I have waited for more than a hour queuing
at a local bank to make a cash deposit,
as a payment to someone
and the way that things are going,
with the black economic empowerment
and people not up to doing a simple job,
soon all of private industry
will be falling apart
as the government departments are doing.
I have noticed friends and family members
who were robbed, hijacked in their vehicles,
raped, tortured and killed
while the South African Police
did their very best to make a arrest
and like in all other things
are not up to it.
I know people who live in despair,
who are totally without hope
while the country’s borders
are flung wide open
to the rest of Africa
to first have a chance at a job
and their degrees and experience
in the face of this means nothing
but not one does bend
under the black heel to submission,
at the mercy of God
their lives go on…
[Reference: “Submission” by Don Mattera.]
poem by Gert Strydom
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