Poem: #BlackMonday needed for far more than Zuma
A FORMER Buffalo Flats man has published his Black Monday poem on his Twitter account.
Tristan Pringle, now a chartered accountant in Cape Town, penned If I had to wear Black to raise deep injustices he felt were being frothed over by the #BlackMonday movement.
Pringle wrote that if he had to wear black, it wouldn’t be for President Jacob Zuma, but for the centuries-long ills which have plagued people in South Africa.
He touched on the Marikana massacre, free education, the colonial system that continued to oppress the country’s most vulnerable, Esidimeni patients, coloured people fighting for their place in South Africa, and for black lives, to list a few.
He touched on Buffalo City, saying he would rather wear black for the city’s numerous potholes, poor service delivery, joblessness and gangsterism.
Speaking to the Dispatch, he said that growing up in Buffalo Flats showed him there were few opportunities for young people to flourish.
Pringle said it would be hypocritical of him to wear black to support an anti-Zuma agenda, when he didn’t do it for the many other problems in the country.
“Corruption is not new, looting of state resources is not new, that has been happening in this country since long before 1994. If we are going to have a protest then we must protest injustice in every sphere of our country.”
A group of “ordinary concerned citizens of the nation” formed the #BlackMonday movement, which at the weekend called for South Africans across the country to wear black and take to the streets to demonstrate against President Jacob Zuma’s actions of firing of finance minister Pravin Gordhan and his deputy, former Eastern Cape economic development, environmental affairs and tourism MEC Mcebisi Jonas.
Pringle’s poem has been shared across social networks.
Pringle said he wrote it as an expression of his sentiments.
“Our political dispensation is a problem.
“We all know that, but the actual problems we face as a nation go beyond just one person, even if he is the president.”—