Mercy is the Gift

In those days we had a choice to make
Whether to raise our voice and be counted
The dilemma in the face of violence
For oppression is a determined foe

And even if silence was our blanket of loss
We marked the times of dread with patience
Consoled that relief would surely come
But always, in faith, we bore witness

Oh the threats we endured,
The heat of cold fury
Such threats that we faced
Those foregone opportunities
Survival carves its blood-tinged imprint
The mold is the human animal

Speak, memory
Of fond flesh departed
Of bonds disappearing
Speak of absences enforced,
This life of ellipses

Speak of unease and timeless worry
Of the heaving bodies we saw drawing their final breaths
Even as throughout, we listened and we stared

But even if a look only deflects the blows of a willful detractor
A burdened soul beholds a shield of grace
Protection that turns into a weapon
For mercy is ours to give

This, the gods have long made known:
Mercy is the gift


...

The fuel Justice layeth on, and Mercy blows the coals

— The Burning Babe by Robert Southwell

Mercy, a playlist

A soundtrack for this note (spotify version)

• Mercy Mercy Mercy by Cannonball Adderley Quintet
• Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology) by Marvin Gaye
• Mercy Mercy by Don Covay
• Somebody Have Mercy by The Memphis Horns (ft. Bobby Womack)
• Have Mercy by Mighty Diamonds
• Somebody Have Mercy by Sam Cooke
• Mercy Mercy by Wilson Pickett
• Mercy Mercy Mercy by Caleb Quaye & the Faculty
• Quality of Mercy by Michelle Shocked
  Ending with a devastating take on the immortal line

...

And earthly power doth then show likest God's
When mercy seasons justice.

— The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare

I've always loved the way the Bard echoes Southwell... the quality of mercy is not strained.


See previously: The Voiceless Past, Speak, Memory, Wrath is for the Weak, Truth and Reconciliation


File under: culture, memory, observation, perception, strategy, displacement, mercy, empathy, Ghana, dissent, Africa, reconciliation, philosophy, Social Living, poetry, toli

Writing log. October 7, 2022

AFRC Member

Apparently he was the father of the soul singer
The evening's main attraction, it was her release party
She was premiering her latest album at Citizen Kofi
But all I would remember was that he was an AFRC member

Fit, even at his age, a tall man in his sixties
Standing there, we were exchanging pleasantries
Accra's finest, we all waited for the artist
Then, unprompted: "I was a member of the AFRC."

Deep breath. He should know better, shouldn't he?
Looked him up and down, you should tread easily
But you couldn't help the now-sharp arch of your eyebrow
You replied, "Those were tough days. We are much freer now."

"Some of us would like to bring those days back."
He really didn't realize that you were taken aback
You lowered your head. Drew on your well of diplomacy
The other two exchanged looks. He repeated: "AFRC"

Armed Forces Revolutionary Council, that blasted acronym
To uphold it as a badge of honor was really quite surprising
For most of us, it meant fear, upheaval, and terror
Blood and arbitrary sin dispensed in equal measure

There was no denying
   that the present situation was awkward
You kept your counsel,
   there were so many things that you could have said
But, well, his lot were the ones
   who gifted us the culture of silence
After inflicting on us a tyrannical reign of relentless violence

If those days were indeed back,
   no doubt there would be a curfew
We'd be stuck at home listening to martial music on the radio
Back then, the only ones with curfew passes
   were AFRC members
I guess he was envisioning a smaller event for his daughter

Was he one of the soldiers who raided houses in the evening?
Or was he rather one of the ones that ordered the beatings?
Still, the name didn't ring a bell, he didn't look familiar
Was he one of the intellectuals who gave them cover?

Revolution, they said, his cohort of murderous cronies
Destroying all nightlife, culture, and much economic activity
It has taken thirty years to recover from their disruption
And, even now, the soul of our society is a pale imitation

My cousin smiled stoically,
   reveling in the silence as she observed the man
Next to her stood my uncle, same age perhaps,
   a worldly businessman
He nodded, at a rare loss for words,
  for even with his smoothness, he couldn't deal
Never mentioned that they'd been forced into exile by this crew,
   forced to rebuild

The amnesty they gave themselves
   is the only reason this guy wouldn't be in a jail cell
Instead of standing there
   expounding blithely, as he was, full of himself
It was hard to take, those years
   when all we could do was bear witness
We're freer now but we still bite our tongue
   out of simian politeness

So: "I'm a big fan, you must be proud,
   she's done well, your daughter"
There was nothing left to say,
   we moved on amidst the nervous laughter
Later, she came and sang a short set,
   her voice ever delicate and tender
But all I would remember of that night
   was that he was an AFRC member

AFRC Member, a playlist

A countrywoman, Rhian Benson, does the honors for this soundtrack. (spotify version)

• Say How I Feel
• Stealing My Peace of Mind
• Say How I Feel (remix ft. Dwele and Slum Village)
• Better Without You

They put us through a lot. Never again.


See also: June 4th, The Wages of Thermidor, and Truth and Reconciliation


File under: life, Ghana, coup, memory, social, observation, perception, violence, reconciliation, history, Africa, poetry, toli

Writing log. Concept: December 31, 2010. April 19, 2022

Bound Together

Bound together in blood and sin
An odd couple really, the mother and the leader
Death made the introduction, arranging their first encounter
Shock and loss exchanged small talk with guilt and responsibility
From those awkward beginnings there was a progression
Yet in their meeting of minds there was no consolation
There would remain something tentative about their manner
Even as others would be disconcerted with their ease with each other

Bound together by grief
To lose your daughter out of symbolism
Hatred that branded her as a target of opportunity
A target, disembodied. Acts of war they might dare say
It came to this, she'd been reduced to an abstraction
But from the fury came a leap of imagination
Contra despair came a choice to forgive
Once made, the decision would be all consuming
Not everyone would understand your life's new direction
To seek out the flesh that spilled your own blood

Bound together by guilt
You sent those young men out to do their damage
Two comrades enlisted on an armed footing
Equipped with guns and hand grenades that evening
They acted on your orders and were all too successful
Shots fired, they unleashed carnage on that tavern
Escaped cleanly to live another day, they made their return
The whole country would be shaken by this violent action
In the quiet moments of the aftermath and ensuing years
You steeled yourself with the knowledge of your part
But could never forget the burden of regret they brought back

Bound together, the irony of the journey
That comfort wasn't found with those who pulled the trigger
Their story was uncomplicated, they'd shed blood and murdered
They would confess to the commission, we were following orders
Politically motivated, the liberation struggle, we were foot soldiers
Rather, the connection was with the one who ordered the massacre
Instead of wrath and acrimony, the start of a conversation
Uncanny really, genuine and miraculous this pattern of exchange
Bound together, you started talking, you talk to this day

Bound together by a word, apartheid
Spectral, even now, it taints all it touches
Repressive, it leaves no heart unblemished
Daily horror brought home, mundane, it didn't spare any blushes
And now, in its place, hollows and absences
Death, not as a visitor, but as a live-in companion
Cruelty the midwife and, for the many, poverty
Grief as surrogate delivering the contracted newborn
Swaddling cloths dipped in blood to wrap your emotion
And sleepless nights to attend to your condition

Bound together in shame, it's all too tawdry
Picking up the pieces, rescuing comfort from the act of empathy
To make the best of things, finding the sacred even in ugliness

Bound together, and what of the others?
Those who lost loved ones
Those who still walk off-kilter, with injuries and pain

Bound together even at a remove
Those who put the can of peaches back on the shelf at the grocery
Boycott and sanctions, you see, we have to do our duty

Bound together, those who sang Free Nelson Mandela and advocated actively

Bound together, even those who were quick to claim it was ancient history
That is was time to move on from this unpleasant business

Bound together then, the mother and the leader
Bound together, a narrative of connection that goes beyond religion
Bound together, exploring the boundaries of the human condition
Bound together, seeking to understand motivation
Bound together to bear the costs of forgiveness and love
Bound together, the clarifying role of empathy
Bound together, the hard work of imagination
Bound together, the long journey towards truth and reconciliation
Bound together, we tread the hallowed ground paved by conversation

Bound together, a playlist

A soundtrack for this note - returning to South Africa (spotify version)

• I remember days by Josh Sithole
• Yehlisan'umoya ma Africa by Busi Mhlongo
• Point of view by Jimmy Dludlu
• Ulibambe Lingashoni by Jonas Gwangwa
• The value of a woman's life by Jimmy Dludlu
• Genes and spirits by Moses Taiwa Molelekwa
• Common dialogue by Jimmy Dludlu
• Zemki nkomo zam by Josh Sithole

Bonus beats: a live version of Busi's urban zulu track

...

After reading The Cost of Reconciliation and learning about about Ginn Fourie, her daughter Lindi Fourie, and Letlapa Mphahlele.

See previously: Heidelberg Tavern Massacre

...

I nominate this note for The Things Fall Apart Series under the banner of The Rough Beast, which asks: who is writing the script?

File under: memory, South Africa, violence, grief, terrorism, culture, observation, perception, reconciliation, blood, healing, The Rough Beast, Things Fall Apart, Africa, poetry, toli

Writing log. Concept: February 26, 2004. April 6, 2022

Speak, Memory

To walk around with your conquerors ever present, and in your face
Forever mindful that their whims are fickle and were previously unrestrained
The mask of civility, if not servility, renders you knowingly abject
For when survival is all, the imperative is to protect your neck

But life is not static, and these things have an eventual reckoning
The arc of justice, even if delayed, affects the event horizon
But in the interim we see the mobs with their brand of injustice and pogroms
Purity tests and shibboleths, the taunts chanted, the blows bestowed with no qualms

Settler colonialism leaves its mark, the imprint might even be genetic
The bloodstains that resound from walking through crimson soaked streets
Shame will out, humans love storytelling too much to forgo living testimonies
Truth and reconciliation rendered even as inconvenient flesh. Speak, memory.

"The past is past. I've accepted it. I don't want to remember. It's just asking for trouble."

— survivor of the Snake River massacres in Indonesia interviewed in The Look of Silence, Joshua Oppenheimer's documentary about the ghosts of the Indonesian slaughter of a million so-called communists.

...

Timing is everything
Observers are worried

File under: memory, reconciliation, history, blood, legacy, culture, politics, observation, perception, Israel, Palestine, Indonesia, violence, outrage, justice, conqueror, colonialism, Observers are worried, poetry, toli

Writing log: May 15, 2021

Truth and Reconciliation

The statues have been coming down of late
Their existence is at least contested these days
The shadows of impunity that were proudly erected by History
Are later seen as blind spots, per Auden's Archaeology
The legacies of men reexamined in a crisis's light
A change of perspective that provides newfound insight

That while one's forefathers may have looted and wielded the whip
It's no minor proportion of humanity that is descended from Genghis Khan
One needn't have been bloodthirsty to be a slaver in days of yore
We know foundational framers owned sour property on their sugar farms.
But wilful ignorance of sins past is quite the strange fruit
Turning your nose up at banana republics while forgetting your own crops
'Tis a blissful privilege to live, as the song goes, in unfinished sympathy
And to have to be actively taught about the importance of empathy

Recall that well before Winnie's husband had assumed the mantle,
Long before the ink was dry on South Africa's new constitution
Their spokesmen were already calling apartheid ancient history
And, well, de Klerk would later join Kissinger in the rogues' gallery
Call it, of cold blooded murderers that have won the Nobel Peace Prize
The three musketeers of fate: irony, infamy and goddamn lies

In my own life there was neither truth nor reconciliation
Our philosophy of survival meant that my countrymen rather embraced fictions
True, we always sought consensus and shared humanity
And our preferred political tactic was conversation
Yet this has meant a fraught and enforced civility
So even with my keen outrage - it comes with the territory
They're an open wound: those provisions of that amnesty
The depth of my feelings towards someone I used to call Uncle
The revulsion towards the Flight Lieutenant might prove to be a mistake
So while I view him as a sinner who drips blood in his wake
A living testament to unresolved matters of justice
His every utterance contemptible and scornful in practice,
That he still walks around unencumbered is too hard to handle

Still, I'm minded that my cousin once fell for one his daughters
The heart wills it wants, I heard the news and broke into kotokious laughter
Indeed, how could I even have forgotten? I was once her babysitter
It's just flesh and blood, hell, my mum was the woman's godmother
It just goes to show that social interplay is complicated
This is as it should be, harken back to Tristan and Iseult
Or Montagues and Capulets, wherefore art thou, Oduro
Inconvenient truths, and that modern saying, entanglement
Or rather that uneasy phrase, structural adjustment

The good professor would ask: is democracy of universal application?
The self-appointed general merely laughed at the quaint suggestion
An article of faith in the conqueror's catechism:
Impunity first, we'll loot to demonstrate dominance
The lessons of brute force, our country has learned in spades
We've been treated to imperialism, militarism, and even consciencism
The die was cast, I'll say we earned our lost decades
But those painful interludes were a temporary inconvenience
True, it wasn't easy living under rogue authoritarians
Yet history's arc would shift us away from those blows of providence

It all now falls to the next generation
To enact cultural revival and a quiet revolution
Yes, blood and sin remain at the heart of the matter
As, indeed, do cultural universals and particulars
The perils of greed and opportunism we'll have to suffer
And irony will linger as life's key register
The roots of our conflicts have always proven to be bitter
The search for a blanket of soul, a soothing balm for painful chapters
What profit a man? In this life, we're all political actors
Forgiveness and love, the anthem of Bloodbath, South Carolina

Truth and Reconciliation, a playlist

A soundtrack to this note, a meditation on secrets and lies. (spotify version)

• Truth and Honesty by Mica Paris
• Forgiveness and Love by Meshell NdegeOcello
• Pride and Vanity by Ohio Players
• Strange Fruit by Billie Holiday
• Lies by Jonathan Butler
• Unfinished Sympathy by Massive Attack
• Truth by Dwele
• Strange Fruit by Cassandra Wilson
• I Can See Clearly Now by Johnny Nash
• Forgive Me by Lynden David Hall
• Strange Fruit by Jose James
• I Can See Clearly Now by Jimmy Cliff
• Strange Fruit by Nina Simone
• The Truth by Prince
• Strange Fruit by Jimmy Scott
• A Few Reasons by Dwele
• Peace Piece by Bill Evans
• What Profit by Dwele
• Searching by Roy Ayers

Photo credit: DK Osseo-Asare

I nominate this note for The Things Fall Apart Series under the banner of The Rough Beast, which asks: who is writing the script?

File under: poetry, reconciliation, history, blood, legacy, culture, politics, rogues, irony, observation, perception, Ghana, Africa, USA, South Africa, personal, race, Observers are worried, Things Fall Apart, toli