By Alfred Mukanaka
With money, manners multiply
Tastes develop for foreign foods
Chicken and chips, shrimps, pizzas we amplify
Not cikanda, masuku picked in the woods.
Sinister supermarkets supply fruits
To new world order recruits!
With money, mourning rites have changed
Beer flows more than tears
Everyone on WhatsApp including chief mourner
Household goods are re-arranged
Locked away, widow fears
Uncles and aunties are the same
Parents, bapongoshi all share the blame!
With money, men multiply wives
In their pockets, STIs breed
HIV/AIDS thrives
Orphanages overflow, we wonder how they feed
These children are they ‘proud and free’
Do they know a family tree?
With money, caddies coax mamas into bed1
Daddies defile daughters day and night
‘You’re dead without money,’ someone said
Better be broke but upright
Than kill for money, the kith and kin
Peddling drugs peeling off skin!
07.04.97
1Sunday Times of Zambia, 23 March 1997