The true test of power is not in what it builds, but in what it overlooks.
Introduction by Terry-Jo Thorne (Researcher)
Poems selected by Alex Gwaze (Curator)
Power speaks first — certain of itself, crowned in its own telling. It gathers wealth, commands voices, and leads us forward. But beneath that certainty, in overlooked spaces and the rhythm of everyday life, something deeper stirs: memory, absence, and the slow recognition of what has been lost or left undone.Something fractures. The land remembers. The people wait. Businesses close, streets fill, systems strain under the weight of decisions made. Leadership is not for the weak. What begins as a dream can harden into authority, then unease, then consequence — until all that remains are observers, caught between what is right, what is wrong, and what the law can no longer hold.To be worthy of being followed requires seeing the full picture — from as many sides as possible, not just the best view. In the end, that is the measure of leadership.
What Else Haven’t I Done
BY ALFRED NYAGAKA NYAMWANGE
Kenyan teacher and PhD candidate who has written extensively in various genres, including poetry, novels, short stories, and children’s literature. Some of Alfred’s notable works include: “Inkscapes and Whispers of a Motherland”, “The Blood Stains”, and “The Woman Called Angel”.
What else haven’t I done
to them — the yapping wolves circling me?
Why don’t they see I am the anointed one
to take them places they cannot imagine?
Why do they claw at my throne,
salivating over my lands,
my towers, my endless possessions?
Evil men and women everywhere —
ungrateful mouths,
forgetting the crumbs I scattered
like mercy.
I have bought voices,
hired tongues polished abroad,
paid for praise in borrowed accents.
I have poured money like rain
to grow loyalty —
yet the soil rejects me.
Still they chant against me,
from all corners.
What else must I purchase?
What else must I promise?
Even the mirrors have grown honest —
they refuse to flatter me.
The reports whisper at night:
things are not well.
But I silence them,
as I silence all things that refuse to agree.
So I tighten my fist.
Let them learn.
A voice can be detained.
A body can be taken.
A whisper can be buried
before it becomes a storm.
If love will not come,
then fear will stand in its place.
Yet even fear has limits.
The streets still murmur.
The night still listens.
And inside me —
a man sits alone,
heavy with gold,
starved of peace,
gnawed by the very hunger
that built his throne.
What else haven’t I done?
Perhaps everything —
except
be enough.
The Masses
BY CHIONISO TSIKISAYI
Zimbabwean spoken word poet, writer, singer, and filmmaker. A Canopus and Bulawayo Arts Award-winning performer and Kenya Poetry Slam Africa runner-up. Her work has appeared in Brittle Paper, Isele Magazine, Lolwe, and at local and international film festivals.
the masses, stand
symmetrical as queues,
like catacombs of BUPTA kombis.
today’s fare
hiked to the bootleg straps
of war-torn Iran.
the natural proclivity
of fuel and breadwinners,
rands, naira
flipped into a rapper’s hook,
sinking the economy.
tomatoes rise geometric
on the vendor’s pavement —
a red shrine swallowing
parliament
like sickle cell.
how anemic
the city has become:
cardiovascular routes bleeding
into new tarred roads,
memory crude as oil.
molasses-rich to mealie-meal kegs,
Econet vendors
dispensing airtime
like prayer.
and at the heart
of an atrophied nation,
amended —
to the soundtrack of
roaring chaos
in Lobengula’s old kraal.
Garden of Beautiful Flowers
BY AYE BRANDON KIVEN
Cameroonian secondary school mathematics and physica teacher, who was longlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize.
Today, the bees were few.
Many didn’t come for the nectar.
They said they could see thick smoke
looming in the distance.
Then I remembered a time in my land
when the bees’ access
to the garden of beautiful flowers
was first interrupted.
It has been thousands of days since,
and nothing good has come of that interruption.
Most of the gardens remain closed.
What happened in my home
should never have happened.
A mistake not to be repeated anywhere.
Mistakes do not nourish a nation;
they turn it into a desert.
Cover image is a photograph by Rufai Ismaila. It can be found @kingsvillevisualsgallery.
MUD Journal 