Africans: The Thorn in Africa's Flesh | By Femi Johnson

Pot calling kettle black
Black people killing one another
I am black amidst fellow blacks
Yet, I was referred to as a stranger.

For unjust reasons, I was brutalized
My head crushed, my stomach pierced
fierce bullets fired into to my heart
Leaving my body dead.

And then, to the birds of the sky
they feed the same flesh we share
I was gruesomely murdered
by one who's suppose to be a sister
yet, they say we share the same mother.

What's up with our ethnic division
We didn't choose our tradition
Fela sang this as a premonition
It's happening again, wake up African Nations.

The black soil, I thought was for all
until some were segregated for ruin
My own brother refused to be my keeper
How do I tell my mother he's my killer.

My journey to South Africa was to flourish
But before my very eyes
all that I gathered was reduced to ashes
now a successful business man is impoverished.

I am the giant of Africa
But my children live in fear
The fear of their own sister nation
And now, they scamper for safety.

Helter-skelter they run
the security operatives laughed as they burn
Yet, in Nigeria a reprisal was gunned
Africa mourn, the day refuse to dawn.

I thought we have a common enemy
But now I know better
we are our own enemies
we are the bug eating our own veggies.

Racism is as evil as xenophobia
Evoke the spirit of Nelson
for South Africa dance macabre
and freedom is held ransom.

How can you derive pleasure
in killing your own kind
This isn't the act of a sane mankind
Is this freedom in your own mind?

Argh! I fear for Africa
This is not the South Africa
Mandela was jailed for
now retaliation is the new war.

You're South African, me West African
No African is more of an
African, than another African
We're one indivisible Africa!

Femi Johnson is a final year student of Kogi State Polytechnic, Lokoja studying Computer Science