The week before I came I was advised to stop working so hard and take time to prepare myself and begin to listen. And what I was told to do, was to listen for the songs, that Africa wanted to sing to me...and I wasn’t sure how to do that….How d’you listen for a song? Would  it come on the wind or play in the treetops? So I’ve tried to listen and I’ve heard many things from crying to laughing to whispering grasses...and in between I’ve heard a lament...and this is what I’ll speak of to you.

I’ve heard a lament…

I’ve heard a lament…
It’s a song for a land, polluted with suffering...
A funeral song looking back on apartheid..
Of crazy injustice...of such separation…
leaving broken up people...legacies of division...
the poorest still living in enforced separation.

The song was lamenting the blessings not flowing…
leaving people downtrodden, distracted, no vision…
A lament for the men: making children, then leaving
A song for the women: chased away from rondavels
A lament for the gogos: neglected, abandoned
A song for the broken, the homeless, the orphaned.

I heard the song weeping, for missing role-models
of daddies and chieftains, of pastors and preachers
...A song crying out for new leaders and teachers.
A song of burned grasses in Mpumalanga.

But high on the winds, I hear new songs are coming:
Care-workers are singing and weeping and working-
selflessly walking and feeding the children…
protecting the fragile...embracing the broken…
foot-washing grandpas- giving hope to the gogos..

And Black Fathers are coming to sing to the women
And Black Mothers are rising to care for their children
I see hope rising: the children are playing!
They are skipping and laughing and learning and thriving!
I see hope coming as people lose blindness:
reach out to their neighbours & stand up for justice!

I see hope coming like rain in the grasses...the parched burning grasses of Mpumalanga
For I know God as Father- One who’ll stay with his children...who will comfort the gogos...not chase away mothers
I see hope coming like rain in the grasses of Mpumalanga...dear Mpumalanga….

Ruth Clay 30/7/14

Mpumalanga
Land of burned grasses...of hornbills and cheetahs...
of sunshine just rising...Hear! A Lion is roaring
Mpumalanga you sing to our heartstrings...
Of men with no papers...of chased away women
Of children as parents...of orphans abandoned ...

And in Matlosane,
have the visions all faded?
Are the prophets all silent?
Will the people stay scattered?
Painfully wounded
neglected and hurting
Will 'fruit salad' examples
start the tide turning?


So the question is, what are you going to do with what you have seen? What counts is not a feeding programme or a grant, but someone who invests of themselves- it must cost you, you.

In the incarnation, Jesus 'moved into the neighbourhood'...he pitched his tent in our village and it changed all of us. (Thanks George.) We visit, because He visited us first.

Stepping forward
Lead us into action
Live to feed the hungry
walk beside the broken
We must go
Keep us from just singing....

Let us wake from our sleeping, new hope is rising