Mercy, Africa, Nursemaid slain by your sucklings!

The way you speak defines you.

We perish for lack of diviners

as if every home housed a witch.

We entered the house of foreign custom;

turned on our kings and went to the whites,

scattered our stock to the winds,

emptied our bins. Nothing's left.

We called our doctors heathens,

making a heathen of God

who created all these things

and convinced Saul of that fact.

We're borne off by this schooling we valued,

we're borne off in ladles of white people's liquor,

though the whites turn their backs on yours.

Fault these points, Greybeard of ours.

We called our doctors heathens,

while our every village slides down the cliffs.

All our liars are in school,

all our witches are in school.

We gave up polygamy; today we take lovers.

We gave up ochre, but now we're all drunk.

It's all the fault of this learning we praise;

we slip downstream empty-handed.

Will the Reds ever be Christian?

We pose as just, so they waver.

Though lively we Christians will die:

we're Christians by day and hyenas by night.

And what then of our parents?

We just left them shut in their homes.

It's all the fault of this learning we praise

and this culture you ram down our throats.

We must come back! Schooling kicked us,

lugged us on its back like a tortoise.

All our thieves are in school—

and yet we say we're students?

The word of God's the very truth

but we've treated it inconsistently.

We lack the truth, we lack tradition.

“Track your traditions,” say diviners.

Agreed!!