Without proper papers, you would always be treated
as a foreigner; his parents used to caution young Fola.
Did the memo hit home in a heavy drop like a deluge?
Fola, fact was cloudy and cold before Year 2026 ensued.
It’s Year 2026. Aged 17, Fola Akinpelumi is repatriated
to Nigeria. What felony has teenager Fola committed?
His stepmother is South African; his father is Nigerian.
It’s Year 2026. The word foreigner is not only scary,
but, also, it seems to have assumed a baffling breadth.
Foreigner splits friends and Africans from South Africa.
Fola falls into a four-day screening trial before being cleared
to futsek on a flight to a Nigerian home he hardly knows.
To futsek is a common South African slang term derived from
the Afrikaans phrase “voort se ek”meaning “go on, get lost.”
It’s an unforgiving and unswerving command to ” “buzz off,”
and it’s comparable to the English “fu.. off”. What mad malice!
Fola has friends here. His heart is fixed here. It’s human nature.
When his ‘Apartheid’ pass perishes while he’s waiting for Home
Affairs to process his permit, he’s slapped with a five-year ban.
He cannot return to Mzansi until Year 2031. What’s that phrase?
South Africa is crawling with petitions, protests and purges.
We once heard of the psychosis and psychology of Dudula,
Year 2026 is wild with Abahambe, March and March and all.
What’s that phrase, again? For the life of Africa, why? Why?
For Fola, a schoolboy who has lived his whole life in South Africa
to be barred from coming back to a place he calls his homeland
until 2031 since Home Affairs cannot secure his papers or ‘pass’
smells of apartheidism. How is Fola a foreigner in Africa? It’s odd.
