Kundi Faraja
The overall social situation in Africa is deplorable, politely speaking. Rapid rate of population growth and the pressure of urbanization and rural emigration, the decay in educational and health infrastructure, growing malnutrition and poverty, the worsening plight of refugees and displaced persons, and widespread unemployment and underemployment, all testify to this.
Women, children and youth bear a disproportionate burden of the social crisis in Africa. They constitute 70 to 80 percent of refugees, and a preponderant share of the unemployed and participants in the informal economy. African women experience the highest maternal mortality rates in the world, while the level of illiteracy among them is almost unsurpassed anywhere else. They do not yet exercise decisive control over their fertility and reproductive capacity. The plight of the African women is being further exacerbated by sexually transmitted diseases such as HIV/AIDS. The subordinate position of women and adolescent girls makes them particularly vulnerable to AIDS infections—younger women in particular have the least power, and lack, in general, access to information, education and communication, health facilities and training, independent income, and legal rights.
Befitting this unfortunate backdrop, I have discovered via random internet scavenging hunts, a great Tanzanian poet by the nickname, Kundi Faraja. I think his poems written in Swahili convey the African pathos. Swahili or Kiswahili is a Bantu language and the native language of the Swahili people found in more than 14 countries such as Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, Somalia, Mozambique, Malawi, Zambia, Comoros and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Here are the English translations of three of his poems.
Poem 1: Development
A man of the people
Enters his office
to sit on the throne
of Party and State,
His stick of power
Across the table.
He looks into the files
To see the demands
Of the millions of people
Who for years since Uhuru
Have just managed to survive
They ring out one message
Man of the people
You have always been telling us
What we need…
Health centres,
More schools,
Clean water,
Better transport facilities,
Better living conditions.
Do you plead incapable
To bring about development?
I declare running
Better than walking
For a young and poor country;
I plead fighting underdevelopment
Tougher than fighting
A wounded buffalo
With a pocket knife;
I plead underdevelopment
Stronger than the blows of the sea
When the hurricane is at its height.
I plead fighting underdevelopment
Tougher than combating colonialism;
I see that it’s more difficult
To maintain peace
Than to stop a coup d’état.
I plead the cry
Of the nation
More painful than the yell
Of a woman
As her husband dies in sickness;
It’s more painful than the screams
Of a man
Dying in agony
In the coils of the greatest python
Found in the African forest.
How is development
To be brought brother
When the people to whom
We have entrusted power
Are corrupt?
I plead the stomachs
Of the privileged few
Greater than the Rift-Valley;
They cannot be satisfied
With a normal share.
I plead the thirst
Of the minority
Greater than that of the Sahara;
No rain can quench it.
I reckon the minority
More sensitive to egoism
Than to National Development ;
Nothing that is not theirs
Is of any interest.
Their response to egoism,
Is faster than camera film to light
But as slow as tropism
To nation-building.
The majority plead
Exploited,
Cheated,
Disregarded,
But, brother,
How is development to come?
Poem 2: Live and Let Die
One says that
My children are dwarfs
That no one seems taller
Than the other.
That they never take a bath
That they are soiled.
That they eat lice
From their clothes
Let them eat, brothers,
Until the system changes,
Until exploitation ends;
Let them eat brother,
Because we are on the way
To build Ujamaa
But, at present,
The system has not changed.
Let them eat, brother,
Because the rich nations
Are not yet ready
To die a little
So that the poor nation may live:
Let them eat, brother,
Because the rich man
Is not yet ready
To die a little
So that the poor man may live
Let them drink water,
Let them eat air,
Let them digest the sunshine
Because that is what
I can afford to buy.
Meanwhile I wait
For Uhuru to flower,
For Uhuru to come
When the time is ripe.
Let them eat brother,
Because the rich man
Is convinced that
It’s because I’m lazy
That they don’t have food.
That they don’t have good health.
That they wear rags.
And that their house
Is like an abandoned hut
Let them eat brother
Because the rich man
Thinks that it’s because
I don’t plan my family
Let them eat brother.
Because the rich man
Does not like to hear
That he is rich
Because of me
That I work hard,
But for him and
Not for myself
That it’s only because
I’m a slave of a system
That I lead a poor life.
Poem 3: Echoes
Me,
I plead guilty
That my woman is a tool
To fulfil my sexual desires,
That she’s the source of sensual pleasure.
A garden
Where I plant my deeds
So as to get children
Which are mine
And not hers,
I plead guilty
That I have regarded my woman
As my property,
Because I paid the bride price
To her parents.
What did her parents think
When they demanded
The cows
The tanks of beer,
The goats,
The money
They knew
That they were making wealth out of me
Because their girl would work for me
Just like a slave
I plead guilty
That I have inherited the stupidity
Of my slavery age parents,
That I have prolonged inequality.
That I have continued oppression.
Though unknowingly.
I am guilty
For dominating My woman.
My nation pleads guilty
That it has shut an eye
To the rights of women,
That it has kept women
In the kitchen,
In the church,
And at home
To look after the children.
My nation plead guilty
That it has given little room
To the she sex,
That the number of girls at school
Has always been smaller
Than that of boys.
My nation pleads guilty
That it has always given a narrow chance
For women to become teachers,
Physicians,
Scientists,
Leader of state
And public organisations,
That their percentage
Has always been meager.
My church is guilty
That it has declared women
Unholy,
Unsatisfied,
Ungifted to God,
And that it has confined the alter work
To the blessed men,
To the chosen men,
The gifted men,
Though it’s nowhere written in the Gospel
That women shouldn’t be priests.
Now, you may do your own internet scavenger hunt for Kundi Faraja and understand his poems by their analyses.
By Annavajhula J.C. Bose, PhD
Department of Economics, SRCC
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