the nations of Africa
do not share the rate of detection
not the like we see
in Bergamo and New York
as they fight disease
through the Corona Wars
but French doctors
want to test vaccines in Africa
where more than two in five
countries remember colonial ambition
of the French where
they tested nuclear munitions
three times the power of Nagaski
from Algeria to Congo poisoned
you do not learn this on your curriculum
Africans are not guinea pigs
not The White Man’s lab rats
but colonial history
will show how Europeans
took Africans as slaves in mass
how the French
used us in laboratory experiments
but today in the twenty-first century
first-world corporations
test in Africa because of low medical literacy
and weak regulations
welcome to 2020, we have colonisation
folks have right to be angry
at testing on Africans and African states
as colonialism wreaks havoc
repeating the sins of history
in the screams of children
sent to wait at the pearly gates
denied the health checks of France
as Coronavirus spreads across
Europe, the colonisers’ dance
to history moving time in analogue
often, I ask why they do us like this
racism in vaccines
life sciences disguised as a kiss
see Ebola and HIV written in blood
across the African plains
in the tint of ecosystems and AIDs
I see articles online how Coronavirus
will bludgeon Africa into silence
many White people will disagree
not able to see how geography
and place is all part of (in)equality
to grow up poor in
Nigeria; Congo; Zimbabwe
is not the same as
being poor in Britain or USA
to choke on Rhodes
Rabies and Hepatitis C
to eat in the vice of colonial history
for France to test here
Africans scream in pain
it’s colonialism in act and name
history repeating itself again and again
red, white and blue stitched in guilt
the France that Africans died to build
at the end of a sword doomed to die
but Triumph sings them a lullaby
activists protest animal tests
but what about when
the animals are humans laid to rest
what passing bells for those who die as cattle
only the monstrous anger of the guns
look for the amputees and deformed
what about the women pregnant and poor
don’t talk about the aftermath of colonial laws
look for black bodies on makeshift stretchers
as colonists donned them brutes and beggars
but this is how colonialism is
not in red soldiers and tanks
but in science, where colonisers
stay colonising force-feeding thanks
burning children of kwashiorkor
a staying power, staying the course
piss that burns boys of ten
turning a peaceful time into FGM
cutting the bodies, peeling flames
as African flesh violently rots on rural lanes
we put this term colonialism in the past
a mistake in a time of greed and patriarchy
producing bullets in munitions factories
of sugarcane, famine and kedgeree
saying disease came from Chinese bats
as colonialism stands like cenotaphs
an Instagram story for likes and laughs
but attack me for ever talking about
human rights and French colonialism
in 2020’s vision of jaded juxtaposition
the nations of Africa
do not share the rate of detection
not the like we see
in Bergamo and New York
as they fight disease
through the Corona Wars
but French doctors want
to test vaccines in Africa
where more than two in five
countries remember colonial ambition
