The Sunday News
By Hon. Cain Mathema (written in 1975)
I don’t want no mud hut
I don’t want it
Do you hear?
I want a cement house
A cement house with window panes
A cement house
With corrugated iron or
With tiles of asbestos
A cement house
With a floor
A cement house with a ceiling.
I don’t want no mud hut.
I can’t bear the smell
Of cow dung every other day.
No,
I want no cow-dung-plastered-hut
I want something more permanent
Something of cement
And corrugated iron or asbestos tiles.
Something with a fresh scent
But not the smell of fresh cow dung.
I don’t want no mud hut
For a sitting room, bedroom and kitchen
And internal toilet and running water.
I don’t like to rush
From the kitchen to my hut for sleeping
Under attack from rain
I don’t want to run with my food
From the wind, dirt and rain
To my other hut
I don’t want no mud hut
I can’t bear to sleep on a mud floor
I can’t because I can’t
And because it dirties my blankets
After all,
Don’t I produce enough cement?
Don’t I produce enough corrugated iron?
Enough asbestos?
I don’t want no mud hut.
Look
What a house my white boss has.
I tell him
I too
Want a house like his.
He replies with kicks and blows
And threats of the sack
Telling me
“A baboon can never live
In a thing like that”.
Sometimes he tells me
My wages are not enough
To build a house like that.
Then I say to him
Why don’t you increase them boss?
In reply
He rains kicks and blows on me
And threatens me with a sack
I don’t want no mud huts
I don’t want them
Do you hear?
They must be confined to museums
History books, leisure and tourism,
Not to necessity and everyday life.
I work so much and produce all these things
But look what I have gained,
A hut built with mud, cow dung and grass
That needs to be changed
Every now and then.
My father worked for years before him,
But what did he gain from those years?
Huts, huts and huts and again huts.
Built with mud, grass and cow dung
Because those who rule us say
Ours is to work
So that they can live in modern, stable
For-all-time houses.
While we live in huts
Built with mud, grass and dung
No, I don’t want no mud hut.
Hon. N.C.G Mathema is a published Ndebele and English poet, playwright short story writer and cartoonist. He has published over 25 books on economics, politics, political economy, news media, cooperatives, human resources and philosophy. He is currently the Minister of Primary and Secondary Education. He is a senator and is also a ZANU-PF Politburo Member. This poem was written by Hon. Cain Mathema in 1975 and was first published in 1981 in a book called, “and now the Poets speak”.
