In her latest work, the South African actor and writer Lebogang Mashile tackles the exploitation and sexism faced by Black women
Mama’s War
Mama’s gone viral
Mama’s screen shuffles faster
Than hashtags invented by Black women
Who turn tech into culture daily
Boardrooms and bedrooms are battlefields
What’s today’s share price for Mama
Mama’s the only profitable stock
Mama’s baby is five years old, mining coltan in Congo
Mama’s foster children’s root chakras never healed
Mama’s who George Floyd called out to
When home is a dangerous place
How does Mama lockdown?
When home is a dangerous place
How does Mama lockdown?
They pushed Mama into government for the numbers
Mama’s a brand ambassador with diplomatic impunity
Mama’s on the evening news talking like a man now
Mama calls it power moves
Mama’s war is the ocean
The refuse in Mama’s belly
The money in Mama’s mouth
The melting ice caps releasing variants
Mama’s heating up
Mama’s a pissed off hellscape
Mama’s asking what do you do when a child star explodes?
Mama’s last born is on YouTube suckling data
To feed the family
Mama wonders why bell hooks never saw 70 and how Winnie couldn’t live at least as long as Nelson
Mama is Shailja Patel, Assata Shakur, Stella Nyanzi, and Mona Eltahawy writing on the edge of the blade
Mama plays hopscotch on national borders
Mama is ungovernable terrain
Mama is death’s favourite lover
Mama is Henrietta Lacks’s blood in vaccines they won’t share
Mama’s comorbidities are 4C hair, commodified fertility, and soil so rich Mama can’t own it
Mama’s working extra shifts to buy herself back
Mama’s in her overdraft paying antiBlack tax
Mama’s talking to the therapist in her mind
About Auschwitz, Amazon and Palestine
Mama’s work keeps everyone alive
But they won’t call Mama a genius
They made Mama famous
And acted like it was a substitute
For being free
Atlas, what do you know
About carrying the world
Mama’s war makes
Myths out of men
Life from man’s rib
Lies from men’s pens
So that we would never gaze
Into Mama
And call her
God
Lebogang Mashile is an actor, writer and poet
