For we, South Africans, supremely wise
In our own conceit,
Parade our pitiful ignorance
And churlish narrowness
With incredible complacency.
Lolling lazily in the sunshine,
We prefer our petty meditations
To the spirit breathed
By dead men to their kind:
The life-giving flames
Of music, colour and word,
Glowing perennially
From the ashes of the past,
Leave us cold or tepid:
For we are, ‘The People’!
Self-satisfied and self-contained,
We are ‘free and independent’
‘Independent and free’,
We are hopelessly fettered
In the bonds of ignorance,
Meanness and Hate.