Do you know what it feels like

to have a machete taken to your lungs?

To hold a drill in your hand for so long

you forget it’s not a part of your body?

To work in a place where light

at the end of the tunnel,

is more than just a figure of speech?

Welcome to the mines

Where men work so far underground

that sunlight is manufactured

from headlamps and golden soot.

Where the sounds of breaking bodies

are drowned beneath a cacophony

of hallowed coughs and hammers.

Where disease, festers in the air

as if the earth

were holding a grudge

against mankind for failing to keep her secrets.

In the South African gold mines,

the reality of tuberculosis

can make every breath feel like a death sentence.

The toxic dust from million year-old rocks

like a swarm of dancing landmines

along the walls of your ribcage.

A bombardment of bacteria

crawling through your throat.

Tsunamis of silicosis and sweat

crashing against shores of black backs

like a crystalline whip—

So these men,

with cobblestone skin, jackhammer hearts

and jawbones clenched like redemption—

Expose themselves

to a world of disease and degradation

unlike anywhere else on earth.

How ironic,

that the industry responsible

for the success of South Africa’s economy,

is also culpable for a pandemic

wiping out thousands of its people.

These are the consequences of corporate indifference.

Where executives unwilling to part ways

with a pocket change percentage of their profits,

enable illness to run rampant

in a community they’re supposed to protect.

With golden clocks hanging in their offices like stolen halos

they refuse to provide real care

for the very people who created their wealth.

So why would anyone subject themselves to this?

But what choice does a man have

when he has to feed his family?

When jobs are as scarce as roses

on a crumbling battlefield.

When he knows his wife and children can’t survive

off of unfulfilled promises.

So he puts on his hard hat,

turns on his light,

and marches miles beneath the earth

amongst flocks of brown faces.

With no choice but to pummel

his heart against the walls of this mine

as if he were searching for his dignity.

And when the miners are deemed too sick to work,

they are simply sent home,

Like disposable human tools

that have lost the sharpness of their edges.

With HIV and tuberculosis cascading

in a spiral-bound pirouette through their bloodstream.

Fathers falling into the eyes of their children,

praying they wont succumb to the same fate.

Lying on deathbeds made of debris and lost hope

Screaming, at the top of their lacerated lungs.

Ngiya gula!

Ngi khatele!

Ngiya fa!

I am sick!

I am tired!

I am dying!

Imagine your father, choking on the inevitabilities of his past.

Your mother, widowed by the misfortune of other people’s apathy.

Your brothers and sisters, settling for a future that seems all but inescapable.

How much longer can we watch

while generations of black men are cycled

through a system that treats them like dirt.

How much longer,

can we simply watch them,

sent home

to die.