The poem was published anonymously in the Northern Rhodesian Journal (in present day Zambia) in 1959.
Some talk of race relations, and some of politics,
Of labour and migrations, of hist’ry, lice and ticks,
Investments, trends of amity
And patterns of behaviour
Let none treat us with levity
For we are out to save ‘yer.When seated in our library-chairs
We’re filled with righteous thought’ho,
We shoulder continental caresTell settlers what they ought to,
We’ll jargonize and analyse
Frustrations and fixations,
Neuroses, Angst, and stereotypes
In structured integration.Strange cultures rise from notes and graphs
Through Freud’s and Jung’s perception
Despite your Ego’s dirty laughs
We’ll change you to perfection,
We’ve read Bukharin, Kant, and Marx
And even Toynbee’s stories
And our dialect’cal sparks
Will make exploded the Tories.Rhodesians hear our sage advice
On cross-acculturation,
On inter-racial kinship ties
And folk-away elongation,
On new conceptual frame works high
We’ll bake your cakes of custom,
And with a socialising sigh
We’ll then proceed to bust ‘em.Our research tools are sharp and gleam
With verified statistics,
Our intellectual combat team
Has practiced its heuristics
From value judgements we are free,
We only work scientific
For all-round global liberty
and Ph.D.s pontific.
Source: Jim Ferguson’s must read Expectations of Modernity, p. 30
kenopalo.com 