From Greatness Too Is Meant for You, an unpublished 2014 manuscript by Adetimilehin Inioluwa Victor (Vic’Adex). Lightly edited for grammar while preserving the original voice.

It has been a very long walk,
Manly actions and defiant talks.
The gigantic whale has fallen,
The ocean looks on in anguish.
The great elephant’s day is done.

He could no longer bear his tusks.
The old white mane sets with the sun.
The world has lost a royal son.
Bloody body, but head unbowed,
Crashed into jail, but freedom untowed.

To selfless service, his spirit unclads,
Waiting in wisdom, patience unmatched.
In the scripted play of slavery,
Forged by the birth of Apartheid,
He was the rogue actor,
Challenging fate and destiny,
Defying hate and mutiny.

Even in prison and in chains,
He was free.
He is the light that stars our night!
The father, the elder, the statesman.
Madiba has joined the immortals.

Chains and hate couldn’t hold him down.
Free at last, he is free at last.
A conscience for the past,
A conscience for the future.
Now he has gone supernova.
Our Tata is gone from the land.

We will not mourn you with tears.
We will bear your legacy onward.
The blazer has made his last trail,
Defiant spirit with heart not frail.
Onward in us his ship must sail.
His worded wells should fill our pail.

Who shall fill his gargantuan shoes?
It should be me, it should be you.
We will walk in his oversized print
Until freedom is a clear rainbow.

Editor’s note: First drafted in the early Vic’Adex voice and preserved here as part of the Words on Rampage archive.