Broken Clay Pots [rev.] Poem by Margaret Alice Second

Our wonderful ANC Government has
made it impossible to employ anyone;
unskilled labour's minimum wage has
remuneration demands set higher than
the work is worth - employees can't be
fired for dishonesty or truancy, enjoying
protection of labour laws & trade unions,
industries rather opt to use machines &
computers; potential workers represent
all risk & liability to possible employers

No more teachers colleges means bad
teaching drags the whole public school
system down with 35 % pass rate, thus
pupils are unskilled in reading & writing,
not even being another brick in the wall -
but just broken clay pots, the high price
of their useless presence assures them
of false worth and total unemployment;
& justice is done - arrogant employers
are punished in advance for having the

Audacity to offer demeaning work, now
a user-friendly machine easily replaces
an inaccessible work force, the masses
depend on social grants for survival; we
rejoice as the Chinese bring their strict
work ethic to Africa, learning Chinese is
everything in our post-colonial continent
marked by lack of consensus on which
indigenous language should become the
new lingua franca to replace the hated

English and French, we prefer Chinese
ideograms; luckily all African languages
will be equally disadvantaged & as if by
magic colonial languages will be gone -
hooray for the new Chinese motherland:
Chinese Communist Republic of Africa!

[25 August 2014]