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# "They have killed Sizakele”
- URL: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/they-have-killed-sizakele/
- Published: 2012-12-10T08:12:36.000Z
- Updated: 2019-02-14T20:49:20.000Z
- Description: A poem by Jessica Horn. Part of a series of poems by African feminist writers for 16 Days of Activism against Gender Violence.
- Author: Jessica Horn
- Tags: 50.50 Our Africa, #Migrated, violence against women, 50.50 newsletter, 16 Days, 2012, 16 Days: activism against gender based violence, #en, #Import 2026-04-09 14:30

- *For Sizakele Sigasa, AIDS and lesbian activist, murdered with*
- *Salome Massoa, 7 July 2007, Soweto*
- Where is she
- in this land of crushed stone?
- Where is she
- as morning dresses the day
- in the dirtied lace of tired gospels
- Where is she
- our sister Sizakele
- in this brittle dawn?
- White powdered faces
- ululate against an unremarkable sky
- as bullets tip the minute hand
- *...one, two, three...*
- collarbones crumble
- *...four, five, six...*
- Here where sun chases starlight
- here in heartbreak’s wilderness
- here she is
- embroidering morning dew
- beading our memories
- in the red and rainbows of militancy
- Here in this theatre of slaughter
- she is clearing a round of clay earth
- intoning a litany
- calling for a witness
- You say: it is not our tradition
- She says: is this your tradition
- to rip the pulse from my chest
- to deny a mother the dignity of dying first?
- You say: in the name of the father and the son
- She says: in the name of my sisters
- slain in meaningless massacres
- for loving their own skin
- A people do not survive
- monsoons of oppression
- only to savage their own kin.

Read [other articles](http://www.opendemocracy.net/5050/16-days-activism-against-gender-violence/16-days-of-activism-against-gender-violence-2012) in the series, 16 Days of Activism against Gender Violence 2012.