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MOUNTED CITIZEN SOLDIER
A Chapter for My Grandchildren - by Mike Watson -MW (Mswati Warrior Poet)

Avenging Saddles - Canter Version

A call to saddles, bugle sound,
We leave our shops and friends, duty bound.

Tracks show clear from saddle height,
Cutting dust in morning light.

Each print leads steady, plain to see,
To that dark clump of distant trees,
Where jackal waits within his lair,
We know his evil feeds in there.

Who said that love was easy, fair,
This is the seed we did not see.
Now mounted, quiet, keen and true,
Stealth and watching, tracking need.

I hear my Grandad, his wise words said,
Each generation MUST defend against, "what made his mates dead."
MW

Why We Rode That Day

We were called to a farm where the farmer and his wife had been murdered. The children lived because their mother hid them before she died. I have never forgotten that detail. A mother's act.

When we found the spoor, it was not just a mark in the dust. It was the line that led away from that house toward that clump of trees.

Our workers were like family to us. We knew their children, they knew ours. They had a job, food and shelter, and we knew them as happy men. Then we saw a change. Some were turning on us for an ideological reason that had nothing to do with their own lives and that most of them did not even believe in. We knew from what we witnessed that they were forced, brow beaten and threatened to comply by a minority of violent thugs. And we knew that minority had backing from a deluded outside world that in effect sided with the communists.

That is what we believed we were riding against. Murder did not bring bounty to anyone. It only left children without parents and good men caught between fear and loyalty.

We rode that day because if we did not follow, the next farm might be next. We rode to stop it. That is what a man did then.

Hot Pursuit - after Kipling's Ballad of East and West

Hot pursuit, men of steel,
Thundering hooves they streak and reel,
Avenging saddles, choking dust,
No word they speak, they must, they must.

The farmer's children left behind,
Their screaming still within the mind,
But tracks lead on through thick grass spread,
Easy seen from saddle head.

Through narrows where the horses plough,
Where sparrows lift from grass bent low,
The spoor runs straight to distant trees,
Where jackal waits in shade and breeze.

Reversed guns, safeties bound to fire,
They know they have angered a hard foe dire,
They hear the thunder, pounding near,
Like elephants breaking, close with fear.

Then heat and fire, the cry goes up,
Contact, contact, and clay erupts,
We shout and move to find good cover,
Each man close bound to his brother.

The g cars wind above with sound,
Many rounds search hard the ground,
No time to look, we must ride on,
It is the victims who mattered, gone.

On through smoke, our strength held fast,
A final sweep to clear the last,
In devil's ground we learned it true,
It is us or them, and hard to rue.
MW - Mswati Warrior Poet

What I Want You to Learn

I tried to explain these things to our workers. We sat and tried to explain that a small group with guns was using them, that the ideas being pushed would not bring more food or more houses, only more graves. But we could not make it land. Whether it was fear, or loyalty to kin, or because our two worlds used such different words for the same thing, they could not hear us. That is the tragedy I carry.

I learned that day that a man cannot excuse evil by saying he was forced. If you allow yourself to be bullied into killing for little or no reason, you have failed in character. I expected more of my own men, and I expect more of myself.

So I leave you this warning. If someone comes to you with a simple answer that says you must hate your neighbour, that you must kill to be free, that your troubles come only from the man of another tribe or another colour or another farm, do not listen. Ask who benefits when you hate. Ask what will feed your children tomorrow if you burn his house today.

Three Laws to Keep You Alive and Free

1. If you do not study history and understand it fully, you are doomed to repeat it. Likewise you can benefit from what really worked.

2. Democracy is not the best solution, BUT it is the only solution that has worked better than any other in history. It lets ordinary men argue instead of kill, it lets a mother hide her children and be heard in court, it lets a farm hand and a farmer disagree and still eat at the end of the day.

3. Meritocracy is the aristocracy of democracy, a good way to improve it for all. Let every man have his say, but let the man who has proved himself lead.

Each generation MUST defend, what made his mates dead.
MW - Mswati Warrior Poet