Once Upon a Future

Once their remote savage jungle villages
were raided by Arab slave traders and
those who survived the long manacled
march to their embarkation point off the
African continent and somehow failed
to die of disease, starvation, privation
and suffocation on the endless voyage to
the civilized world existing on continents
beyond their knowledge of existence
their proto-humanity displayed at markets
sold to the highest bidder to become
the property of those whose skin colour
was so dazzlingly preferential to their own
their enslavement wrote their destiny.
But the vast continent of Africa was not
voided of its population in the cradle of
humanity robbed of its innocence and
the remainder became familiar with another
scourge, that  of colonial rule with superior
beings dictating their lives in their very
own homes. Now those homes have been
long administered by those whose physical
appearance mirrors their own and their
condition of existence is that of tribal
conflict, sectarian violence, droughts and
famine, and those once gathered as slaves
now hurl themselves toward the very
continents once so unfamiliar, anxious to
leave their homes in Africa, as desperate
migrants seeking haven anywhere else
from the despots and tyrants, warmongers
and theocracies that make life untenable.
Strange, is it not that now they are seen
as equals they are no longer welcome....