Prosecutions Yes, Persecutions No & In Vain by Ndaba Sibanda

Prosecutions Yes, Persecutions No 

By Ndaba Sibanda

nobody had been decent 

enough to offer an apology

to the victims, the orphans,

the fragmented communities-- 

for the chief offenders acted

and presented themselves

not only as untouchables 

 but law unto themselves 

and a bunch of paragons

without tints and skeletons   

 

the missing piece of the puzzle

had a lot of anthropologists,

victims, religious organisations, 

human rightists and activists  

making brave, brilliant efforts

to dig deeper into a genocide,

into why o why dear folks--

some humans were inhuman

enough to commit and cover

horrific crimes against humanity

 

their findings showed that

sellouts had received caresses, 

their betraying palms greased,    

the culprits had orchestrated

circuses where stark evidence

was perverted into carcasses,

truth into lies, facts to fiction,

mercenaries acted as agents

of justice, criminals as judges!  

    

their verdicts didn’t only show

that the doers were  a bunch 

of shameless and heartless felons

but also that they were the worst 

cowards and quacks of love and justice

and the best killers of a nation`s dreams 

 

In Vain

 By Ndaba Sibanda

at the heart of a struggle 

are founding principles 

but what if such  values 

are rendered valueless 

in practice—was that

struggle not in vain? 

 

About The Author 

Ndaba`s poems have been widely anthologised. Sibanda is the author of Love O’clock, The Dead Must Be Sobbing, Football of Fools, Cutting-edge Cache: Unsympathetic Untruth, Of the Saliva and the Tongue and When Inspiration Sings In Silence.  His work is featured in The Anthology House, in The New Shoots Anthology, and in The Van Gogh Anthology, and A Worldwide Anthology of One Hundred Poetic Intersections. Some of Ndaba`s works are found or forthcoming in  Page & Spine,  Peeking Cat, Piker Press, The Ofi Press Magazine, SCARLET LEAF REVIEW  Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Amazon.ca, and the Pangolin.