Freedom Lost

Are the days of freedom over
Are the days of freedom dead
Will the people let it happen
Without a word to be said

What will it take to stir them
from their sedentary ways
Must they station troops in our homes
or just take them all away

Freedom has a price
for which we must forever pay
I’d rather lose it dying
than see it chipped away

Monashe Ndlovu
Phumzile Primary School

Poem of Freedom

Once
You were made of the sky
do you remember that?

Before they told you
What you were supposed to be
Before they destroyed your elegant wings.

Before they tricked you and chained you
to an idea, to a prison they made for you
branded you with painful labels.

Tried to remould you
into something
easier for them to understand.

But your blood didn’t let you forget
did it?

The taste of the sky
The memories of flying to the horizon.
But your blood didn’t let you forget
did it?

The taste of the sky
The memories of flying to the horizon
just to kiss the sun before he feel asleep.

Once Apollo himself loved you.

Bongiwe Chabangu
Phumzile Primary School

Freedom

Freedom from fear is the freedom
I claim for you my motherland
Freedom from the burden of the ages, bending your head,
breaking your back, blinding your eyes to the beckoning
call of the future

Freedom from the shackles of slumber wherewith
you fasten yourself in night’s stillness
Mistrusting the star that speaks the truth’s
adventurous paths,
Freedom from the Anarchy of destiny
whole sails are weakly yielded to the blind uncertain winds
and the helm to a hand ever rigid and cold
as death,

Freedom from the insult of dwelling in a puppet’s world,
where movements are started through
brainless wires,
repeated through mindless habits.

Tinashe Ndlovu
Phumzile Primary School