land rights rhyme

Here's a rhyme I wrote and read for our final synthesis session for our program in Tanzania. It's focused on the theme of land rights and linking Tanzanian social movements to those in the U.S:


I'd like to talk about the human right to land
whether it be soil, icy mountain, or sand
it's an important topic we all should know
i'll assume many voices so follow my flow

much of it began at the Berlin Confernence
when European powers birthed imperial hubris
It was 1886 at a German table,
when an entire continent was deliberately disabled

"It's a cake for us, but let's share," they said
"You can have the foot if you let me have the head."
Their favorite term was the word pacification
The white man's burden, and racial subordination

Soon Tanganika was a centralized state
implementing policy that fostered hate
a colonized body and a colonized mind
"I'll fight 'til I die if you take what's mine."

"You can have your power, you can have your might,
but in your heart of darkness, do you know what's right?
do you know my rights?
in your heart of darkness, can you hear my plight?
can you resist my fight?"

In 1895 there was a German decree
declaring all these lands German state property
In 1920, the British got the land
and took the same control that Germany had

But then came the sixties, revolution worldwide
in the states, malcolm x, ella baker, freedom rides
in Africa, Nkruma and Nyerere
The Maasai told the British, "Yo. Olecere!"

But black liberation's not the only unity
indigenous struggle was linking you and she
It's about AIM and taking back wounded knee
"land access matters if we want to be free"

There was a strong global hope and a new sense of power
but soon in many mouths it left a taste of sour
cointelpro took out the black panthers
and ujaama still gave state-centric answers

and then a neoliberal regan-thatcher revolution
a second colonialism masquerading as the solution
"you can have your power, you can have your might
but in your heart of darkness, can there ever shine a light?"

Modern Tanzania erodes Zanzibar sovereignty
and increases in number national park policy
like they drew the nations they create park boundaries
i hear all the elephants yelling, "don't surround me!|

To preserve the land, you put up a fence?
The state makes dollars but it doesn't make sense!

Nearly twenty parks on thirty percent of the land
violent displacement by the states iron hand
in the name of investment, in the name of conservation
lives lost from paramilitary operations

As a rich white westerner I've learned two T's
Terrorism for you, and tourism for me