Rwanda: Remember Rwanda

opinion

The nation's memory is under assault/From marinated murmurs and slanderous slurs/The journey from hate to holocaust/Indeed is perilously short

Parables from Our Recent Polls

I

The journey from hate to holocaust

is perilously short. . . .*

In the national ballot just concluded:

Many voted their tribe

Many, their tongue

Many saw nothing holier than

Crosses and Crescents

In the polling booth

Utterly mesmerised by

The poisonous correspondence

Of region and religion

Many dug up skeletal skirmishes

From the nation's graveyard

Many were already glowing from

The flames of fires yet unborn

War of words

Words foretelling wars

About who owns the land

And who is owned by the land

Bilious boasts, un-tethered tantrums

Shameful shibboleths once again

At the seething gates: blind swords from

The armoury of the mouth

The nation's memory is under assault

From marinated murmurs and slanderous slurs

The journey from hate to holocaust

Indeed is perilously short

II

When does a friend become a foe

How does a trusted neighbour suddenly

Turn a neigh-bore saddled with count-

Less stereotypes and deadly definitions

On streets ominously loud with othering appellations

Whose jagged tones unnerve the ear?

How does Intolerance hatch into a fire-combed cock

The moment Intemperance undoes the egg?

Legatees of a hasty amalgamation

Whose mongrel congregations have never learnt

To adult into a bonding whole, when shall we begin

To see something good in the divinity of our difference?

And so, another ballot bedlam

And its barbarous aftermath

Cyber mobs wild with imprecations and virtual assassinations

Their reptilian malevolence, their deadly untruths

Unhappy that nation which brings out

The worst in its people

Unhappy the people who only bring out

The worst in their nation

Pogroms often begin

With the first misbegotten Word

Ye Flamethrowers of the current Nigerian war,

Remember Rwanda!

* These two lines are from "Ode to Hate", Pages from the Book of the Sun: New & Selected Poems, 2002.

Niyi Osundare, one of Africa's foremost poets and academics, is Emeritus Distinguished Professor of English, University of New Orleans.

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