The South African Pass System

Slanted light streams through,
shades of lilac dance across the red polished floor.
Out in the moonlight
colour blends into the ground-
blood seeps into our past, our culture, our lives.
The strain of our ancestors pushes us apart,
slowly we adapt. The old country

of new rules-
a place for everyone according to the Boss Man.
What have we become?
Dictators?
No, rulers of the New World-

choosers of the land. White dominates all.

Reclassification they demand, families they destroy.
Babies scream, mother’s weep:
victims of this rainbow nation.
Broken voices whisper, pained silences answer.
“Sisi, can we see momma today?”
My sister’s vacant sobs, reflections of our country’s rotting undercoat.

Years later, a black woman passes,
a flash of recognition;
could it…?
No. This stranger is a serving woman.
Time drifts, heaves and falls-
memories fade, all feeling subsides.
Grass grows; trees stumble as seasons march on.
We forget, gradually.

Patterings of feet remind me of songs I shouldn’t know-
they belong to a childhood that I shouldn’t remember.

A new serving woman is needed,
again I meet the black stranger-
her face creates a tingle of emotions.
Mnemosyne plays tricks upon her children;
surely this stranger is merely a pawn in the Goddesses’ game.

A voice of honesty, a language spoken from my youth;
from the depths of my suppressed emotions the stranger speaks:
Indodakazi yami. My daughter.

© Heather R Ellis
May 2010