Album: African Litany

Mama Shabalala

An old lady walking down the dusty farm road
Looking for a simple home
She doesn't want anything extremely smart
And she doesn't need a telephone
She's the child of a refugee running from the Zulu war
Living from hand to mouth, dodging the wrong arm of the law
She's old and she's bent, her eyes can hardly see
And she's going home forever to Weenen County
Chorus
Uhamba njalo wemaShabala
Ukhumbula ku-phi?
Uhamba njalo wemaShabala
Ukhumbula ku-phi wena?
Ukhumbula ku-phi wena?
Uthwala 'nzima wemaShabalala
Iya-phi indlela?
Uthwala 'nzima wemaShabalala
Iya-phi indlela?
Izinto zomhlaba
Izinto zomhlaba
She's built more homes than fingers on her hands
A sharecropper's wife living on County Crown land
And then they wrested the harvest from the land and its lords
And when her man died she could cry no more tears
And she had lost everything that she ever had to lose
So she picks up her walking stick and puts on her car-tyre shoes
And she's walking in a dream listening for that special sound
The echo of the plough whip over Weenen County ground
Weenen County you took my man she says
You took my home, you took my land
You left me all alone - now I'm coming home.
Weenen County in the springtime
Hadeda's on the wing
Blue morning
Blue morning
Repeat chorus and fade out