The thing about being a former colony
Is that its hard to know
How much of your society’s sin
Is inherent and how much
Is borrowed.
Our sin is layered,
First the sin
We’ve plunged our hands into
Of our own volition
And then there’s the sin
We inherited from our former captors.
And so in an attempt to redeem ourselves
Some of us have sought to
Beat the African out of us
As though being from this place
Was inherently damning,
While others have turned to
The exorcism of everything from that era
Seeing occupying demons around every corner
And wanting to burn it all
To the ground-
Self redemption by decolonisation.
But sin is sin.
Layered or otherwise
And no matter how hard we try
There is no saving ourselves-
We need a Savior.