In response to the tragic events that have scarred the ideology of a rainbow nation, Afro Arts extended the Department of Sports, Arts, and Culture’s Long Night of the Poets initiative with a critical moment of introspection and interrogation into the Black condition.

Anchored in being the clever black, anchored in being the reasonable friend, the skeptic who is not brave enough to call bullshit on anything that waivers from his purpose and subsequently walk away from it, I swim.

We must question the ideal of the youth being the solution to the current dated and spoiled cabinet who have their self-interests taking precedence over their civil service. The youth who thrust themselves into the rites of passage that leads them to the doors of ANC and Eff offices, the leaders of student unions, have often come under fire for inappropriate behavior.

During the peak of our political history, the road to civil war was paved with yellow police vans, generational dislike for canines rooted in PTSD, and a dream for freedom being the talk of the country. It was the dream of every black farmer who was stripped of his land and titles during the relocation process, the dream of every drunk uncle who as a young lad saw himself becoming a doctor, but the odds of the system traded his vision for the bloodstream of alcohol, isolation, torture, and violence.