There is blood on the hands of my family
And it flows through my veins
It’s the blood of the Congolese
Hands that were maimed
There is blood on the hands of my family
And it flows through my veins
It’s the scars from the whippings
The chicote lacerates
There is blood on the hands of my family
And it flows through my veins
While some like to pretend
It just went down the drain
There is ivory in our living room
Proudly displayed
Behind a beautiful glass case
It’s shaped into statuettes
And cutlery
And proudly displayed
Next to pictures
Of my grandfather
There is a trail of blood
That leads from Europe
To Africa and back again
It ebbs and it flows
And it sinks the boats
And it buoys Black corpses
Floating across the Mediterranean
Like plastic bags
While the bananas in our supermarkets
Are guaranteed safe passage
There is blood on the hands of the Europeans
Missionaries, cartographers and state employees
The Germans, Dutch, French, Spanish
Belgians, British, Italians, the Portuguese
And the Luxembourgers, too
The only difference being
Is that that chapter is never told
In our History books
Yes, there is guilt
But it’s covered by denial
There were state-sponsored slaughters
And the political assassination
Of Patrice Lumumba and
By the time it supposedly ended
We had given them the tools
To exploit themselves
On an industrial scale
To destroy their forests
To kill their animals and leave
The elephant meat rotting away
Under the savannah sun
So that the Chinese can have ivory
In their bullshit aphrodisiacs
We taught them to beat their children
We taught them to hate each other
And we taught them to hate themselves
But smile all day
Yes, there is blood on the hands of my family
And it flows through my veins
There is a chapter in History
That is still ajar
That we fail to learn from
And fail to teach
So maybe look it up online
And as you do
You might as well look up that
There is blood on your hands
There is blood on your phones
In the cobalt dug up by gloveless children
There is blood on your computers, on your cars,
on your planes, on your machines
There is blood on your batteries, on your magnets
and your jewelry
There is blood on your diamond rings from the mines
of the Katanga province
There is blood on half of all of your things
But hey, there’s still charity
And you can adopt a hungry child
And we gave them Christianity
So we’re not all bad, now
Are we?