Poem: African Sit Tight Presidents

By Kwesi Atta Sakyi 21 October 2011

Stolen ballots deserve swollen bullets,
Those who make peaceful transition impossible
Sow seeds of civil strife and rancour
They harvest wild fruits of their rapacity
Change, a desideratum of good governance,
Change, a constant never changing,
Forever changing, change never changes

Sit-tight African presidents
Unnerve the raw nerves of people power,
Sit-tight presidents gang-rape fantastic elections
Thinking, they are the only ones with erections
They rob the people’s mandate
To overstay their welcome,
Shame, they have defaecated in their nests
The stench of corruption stool rends the air,
To cover up, they’ve clipped their own wings
To stay lame duck on their thrones
Forgetting, they can be dethroned and overthrown
Through thorough people power or ochlocracy
Shame, sit-tight presidents mock democracy fight
A frightful and fanciful farcical farce
They take liberties with people power and go for a ride
Forgetting, their imaginations have run wild
True democracy demands constant turnover
The megalomaniac dream of sit-tight presidents
Give us hangover,
We are sick and tired, they better hand over
Yes, sit tight presidents pay lip-service to democracy
They demonise critics who decry oppression,
Suppression, depression and subjugation
Yes, sit tight presidents sit tight on their fat thighs,
Little knowing, ticking away beneath their pants,
A seething social time bomb waiting to explode,
The whole gamut of government can implode
Then up mobocracy, people’s power
And down demagoguery,
Sit tight presidents’ trickery and wizardry

Factions, frictions, and fictions,
The rumour mill is pregnant with dictions
Rumour, a pastime and addiction,
Deeds, misdeeds and in deed, deep deals which defy description
Sit-tight presidents have questions to answer
The social conscience has filed it all away
The institutional memory has a lot to unbare and undress
Palpable anger holds sway far and near
Yes, the day of reckoning fast approaches
And sit-tight presents will be treated like roaches,
While their memories relapse into abject amnesia,
Their subjects face object rejection
They are utterly eviscerated (disemboweled)
By the grinding pangs of pungent poverty.

*This poem does not necessarily apply to Ghana but it is pertinent to all African presidents who have overstayed or intend to overstay their welcome.

Kwesi Atta Sakyi