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101 - Sabelani Niyabizwa Balindi Watchmen, respond: you're summoned!!

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 June 2019

Jeff Opland
Affiliation:
University of South Africa
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Summary

Editor, thanks for the poets’ column. We can't sit silent, the country's rotten. Ministers, God desires us to know the truth, to know it through you. Buy the truth, then, and don't sell it. Are there any watchmen among you who can show us the truth as Noah did, so that we are not destroyed? Or like Jonah who was dispatched to Nineveh; or like John the Baptist, who said “I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness”? Do we have preachers like that? There are murderers in your country, Minister. Do you ever go to the forest to convert them? There's frightening drunkenness. Do you ever go to the canteens and bars to rouse the people there with Jehovah's word? Or perhaps you're afraid of being beaten up? Jesus himself visited those places; he didn't select only the homes of those who went to church. The world would never have been set right if this was what Jesus preached. Things have gone wrong in Africa now because of what we who know the scriptures preach.

Minister, do you pray for the sick? Perhaps you select only those you know and the rest are nothing to you? Do you ever ask us about our parents, where they are and how things are with them there? Do you ever ask us about these marriages, in which you join us in the morning and by sunset we've separated and disappeared? Where do you sever us, Minister? How, with this knot that says what God has joined together, let no man put asunder? Peace!!

Let's give thanks to the battle hero:

he vanquished and humbled his enemies,

crushed death and the ancient serpent

to wipe us clean of sin.

We read of him in the great book today

as the saviour heading for heaven.

He called to those who took to the hills

to tell them the tale of these sources of mercy.

Let the learned of Africa rise

(Jehovah opens his arms to them)

and bear the report today

recalling their flocks arrayed in rank.

U Davedi wati kwakonakala

Waka amanzi equla apalala

Pambi ko Yehova ecamagushela

Nawe ke Afrika lila ungcangcazela.

Type
Chapter
Information
Nation's Bounty
The Xhosa Poetry of Nontsizi Mgqwetho
, pp. 438 - 441
Publisher: Wits University Press
Print publication year: 2007

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