By Busani Ngcaweni
Dear America,
We write to you with hands still shaping the calabash of our democracy,
kneading stubborn lumps of history into something resembling economic justice.
We know our fractures — the colour line, the weight of poverty,
roads unpaved, jobs unborn, corruption, misgovernance, ghosts of socioeconomic exclusion haunting our polity.
These are our contradictions, and we own them.
We rise each day to mold them into bridges,
though the work is slow, though the clay cracks under the sun.
From the perilous streets of Inanda in Durban,
where shadows of violence stalk hope,
to the jacuzzis of Inanda of Sandton,
we are a people stitching ourselves whole,
refusing to let past define our destiny, even as we acknowledge that there is history in every future.
When our athletes blast across tracks and fields,
their sweat a shared anthem, we roar as one nation.
Rainbow colours drape us in pride.
But when inequality sharpens its teeth, we clash,
not because we hate each other, but because we are alive,
wrestling with the raw nerves of transformation and national reconciliation.
A ritual every family endures to avoid complacency.
Our laws, etched to redress centuries of theft and bigotry,
are not flawless. But they are ours, the future we chose.
They pulse with the urgency of a people
Who refuse to let the past strangle the future.
Yet you, America, wield our struggles like a poisoned blade.
You withdraw aid, pretending to be righteous,
while amplifying whispers from those who cling to old hierarchies— far-right voices spinning fiction into fact,
painting redress as revenge.
Do you not see, America? Their lies are sparks on tinder,
scorching fragile shoots of national reconciliation.
Deniers of genocide across the Mediterranean.
When you punish us for legislating equity,
you side with shadows that fear the light
of shared land, shared wealth, shared power.
Or have you not read the Freedom Chapter?
Did you skip the preamble of our “world-renowned” Constitution,
the one that speaks of redressing historical injustices?
We ask you: When did your revolution bloom without turmoil?
Did your march toward liberty not stumble through blood and debate?
Do we condemn you for the grime in your cities,
the poverty gnawing at your alleys,
the data barons turning democracy into a meme?
Do we judge you for the despair of your national minorities,
trapped in Gaza-like conditions?
Do we mock you for lacking a bullet train,
even as you claim the title of greatest economy?
What do you call all this corruption you now expose? Good governance?
No, we don’t dismiss your dysfunctions.
We know the ache of becoming—thirty years, not three hundred.
We, too, stumble, but our sovereignty is no pipe dream.
It is survival.
To your leaders we say:
Do not mistake our contradictions for failure.
A nation in dialogue with itself is a nation alive.
Unite your diplomacy with facts, not fear.
Offer tools of reconstruction, not threats.
Listen to the mothers in queues for water,
hear the ululating grandmothers of our new graduates,
the farmers securing our food,
the unemployed condemning corruption.
These voices are worthy of your attention—
not the architects of apartheid’s nostalgia.
America, the road to economic justice is long,
and we are paving it.
Walk beside us, as you did when HIV threatened our existence.
But do not break our stride with the boots of hegemony.
Do not mistake labour pains for collapse.
Our contradictions are birth pangs,
and we will name our future on our own terms.
Yours in unwavering resolve.
Professor Busani Ngcaweni is an author, policy analyst and academic. He heads the National School of Government in South Africa, which has grown into a leading management development institute in Africa. This article was first published at Inanda Proverbs at
