Innocent White Civilian People Were Slaughtered (In Answer To Don Mattera) Poem by Gert Strydom

Innocent white civilian people were once walking
on Church Street in Pretoria; they were men,
women and children
busy with their daily lives,

some just having gone shopping,
some meeting a loved one in a restaurant
others returning from school
and they were doing nobody any harm.

By orders of Nelson Rolilahla Dalinbunga Mandela,
without any kind of alarm or warning,
a car bomb was set and exploded thundering
throwing shrapnel, making glass fall like rain

and black people took pride
at the sheer slaughter, at the falling,
the maiming, the decimating and dying of innocents
and that day remains a bitter thing.