BY Dawn Cavanagh
here.
We are not for sale. Neither are our land, our bodies, our stories.
Our labour is not for sale.
They will not flood our space with mines and resorts.
They will not coerce or shoot us out of here, here.
And us, we do not give our consent to the violence of their guns and their greed.
We refuse.
here.
We remember to remember after many months, their forgetting.
We show and tell about how and where we live and love; we applaud the dance, the song; we know desire, we are of the erotic. here, laughter bubbles and bursts as we scramble for the blue clay plates, sit on traditional orange cloths spread across the floor, touch and turn the woven grass, blown glass and ancient beaded bracelets clinking. We offer artefacts of all kinds.
here, we speak of our Afrikan ways, stolen and reclaimed.
We create and relate. here, we cry.
here.
We ache and mourn for Marikana as place and people, a Marikana not as massacre.
Marikana, where the “silencing the guns” did not reach. Or the shooters of the guns and the one who gave the orders chose to not hear. 16 August 2012. Thirty-four lives, a sudden, brutal ending follows peaceful protest. thirty-four on that day, and many after who still die of broken hearts and crumbling dreams.
here, children, legs covered in the red dust of the barren soil, fall down, deep into pit latrines. Dead. 30 years later still. And the president doesn’t know why this is so.
here, we mourn for the people and their spaces, places, their past and present –
turned, twisted, tortured.
The Great Lakes. Democratic Republic of Congo. Sudan. Somalia. Ethiopia. Nigeria.
Gaza.
Too many years later, too little action. here, there is no ceasefire, armistice. here, our homes are no more than clouds of ash hovering, floating above hills of grey rubble. No silencing of the guns here.
here we choke as we massage the distended bellies under the jutting ribcages of our starving kids. And we wait for hope, at least in the intermittent silences between the relentless violences.
here, we sit in neat rows donning tailored suits and shiny black shoes. Rub guilty shoulders at boardroom tables in highly secured spaces. White walls, white tablecloths. White thoughts.
How many national “dialogues” and multilateral procrastinations later? Their summits and councils, commissions and resolutions and statements. They’re too little, too late.
How many elaborate plans and fake feminist foreign policies – a hundred fake promises, a thousand lies later. Too many possibilities twisted and turned into what Audre Lorde called the master’s tools.
There, their heels drag in deadly patterns; their dialogues and councils now mass graves of conscience.
here.
We are not for sale. Neither are our land, our bodies, our stories.
Our labour is not for sale.
here, we do not give our consent to the violence of their guns, their greed, their mines, their minds.
here.
We are steadfast in love, steadfast in struggle. Sumud.
here, our hope is untouched. Mine ebbs, yours flows. here, we find stillness, resolve. Even with the shots and the sirens, the sirens and the screams.
here, we do not sit and wait. We have learned they will not save us. We do not go meekly.
A new world in the making: we remember, we gentle and tender, we gather, create. We sing, we dance. We connect.
here, we cry…
_______________________
Nokusa
16 August 2025
Inspired by the words, passion and determination of many activists in multiple spaces.
Remembering the people of Marikana.
Remembering Michael Komape.