Happy Birthday by Dennis Brutus

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Brutus Poem: Happy Birthday, ANC, 8/1/09

January 8  

Luthuli, Moroka, Kotane  

Nokwe, Tambo, Hutchinson  

Slovo, Wolpe, Bernstein, First  

Mandela, Sisulu, Govan Mbeki  

they were people, colleagues, friends,  

encounters on the long hard road.  

Over the decades we defined  

our goals, the nature of our struggle,  

ideas, influences, helped articulate:  

that some have strayed, lost direction,  

some subverted goals, even while  

others clung grimly to pledges,  

promises, remembered tortures  

others have endured, had visions  

of youthful corpses in Soweto's dust.  

Over long years, arguments, debates,  

we phrased our aims, changed language,  

settled on ambiguities,  

heeded distant barked instructions.  

Somehow a Front with many parts:  

Morogoro, Lusaka, London, Dakar,  

Sebokeng, Sharpeville, Kwazakele.  

Well, of course, we cannot despair,  

must renew, stubbornly, our hopes  

and our resolve for social justice:  

A New World Waits to be Born.