10 Jun 2020

To many across the world, Mr George Floyd was only a 46-year old man, who on May 25, died at the hands of the police after a convenience store employee called 911 and told the police that he had bought  cigarettes with a counterfeit US$20 bill.

Many remember Floyd through his final harrowing moments as he gasped  for air with a police officer’s knee on his neck and uttering the words “I can’t breathe”, which have been a rallying cry with sprawling protests and anguished calls for racial justice across the world.

For Frank Nubuasah of the Diocese of Gaborone, it is more personal, as he knew Floyd’s love for humanity first hand. 

The Bishop was so overawed with emotion that he could not answer this reporter’s questions on his friendship with the man who is influencing change in race relations, in his death, but referred him to his letter that is circulating worldwide.

 It is indeed a pity that Bishop Nubuasah’s invitation for Floyd to visit the ‘beautiful Botswana to see wildlife in their natural habitat, not a zoo as well as a cattle post and masimo (ploughing field) and enjoy the country’s coveted delicacy of pounded meat, Seswaa has ‘to be put on ice’.

“With global warming, maybe the ice would melt and I can revisit the plans. Who knows, Quincy might make it to see the stunning beauty of a lady that puts me on her laps day and night to feed and nourish me. She caresses me and supports me. This beautiful lady Botswana is home to great men and women. How can you miss this visit we had planned so long ago? My heart is aching badly. My writing you this letter is a therapeutic coping mechanism I learnt years ago when we met in Pittsburgh. Your life was cut short, my friend.

To Bishop Nubuasah, Floyd was not the criminal portrayed or implied in the nearly nine-minute graphic video of his death at the hands of the Minneapolis police officers, but a gentle soul who loved immensely. The Bishop said Floyd ‘… dreamed equally big, unmoved by the setbacks of his life’.

Writing an emotional farewell letter to his now departed friend of over two decades, Bishop Nubuasah says he met Floyd at a baseball game at Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburg in the United States in the 1990s, when Floyd was barely 20 years old.

With memories of their first meeting seemingly still fresh on the Ghanaian-born Bishop’s mind, he says “I still do remember vividly our first meeting, it was at a baseball game. You came wearing blue jeans, T-shirt, a cap, holding a huge paper cup filled with Coke in one hand and a bag of popcorn in the other, a youngster, barely 20 years. We got to chatting and became friends”.

In what he described as his last communication with Floyd in this ‘land of the living’ that rejected  his right to live, Bishop Nubuasah defined his friend with a distinctive features of a large nose and thick lips, which he said are distinctive African features.

  “I know, you always reminded me that you are not African but African-American. Both backgrounds were important for you and you did not want to lose any. You were standing solidly with both feet in two traditions. Between these feet of yours was a lot of water called the Atlantic Ocean. You never got to cross it,” says the letter.

The Bishop states that one of the things he cherished the most about Floyd was his very infectious smile, adding ‘It was as if the coronavirus learnt from him  how to infect people’.  “Your heart was very big and accommodated people. It was always, okay with you to reach out to one more person. Yes, you would run a mile for anyone. Run you did for me on a number of occasions, but that is a story I will tell some other time”.

The Bishop said his heart was heavy as he sat in his prayer corner to write the missive knowing well that others will read it but Floyd will not. “We humans, through a representative of ours made sure that your eyes were closed and would not open again. That is however not true, your eyes will remain forever seeing the fire you started at death. The revolution that your sacrificial death inspired and the new movements and alliances against racism, classism and discrimination are growing. You lit a fire that is burning for peace and change. So, my friend, when you hear the chant, ‘yes, we can’ know that we are doing it in your name and for you. Gone, but very much here! On the mother continent we would call you, the living dead.

I recall the vacation I spent with you and your folks. Quincy was a baby boy at the time. It was a good escape from my books. What great BBQs we enjoyed in the summer evenings. I thought we in Southern Africa eat a lot of meat, but boy, you love your rare steak with blood on it,” says the letter.

The Bishop further remembers Floyd taking him to watch ‘a real football game not the American version but real football, the gentle game’. “Oh, yes, you were bored to the bone. You wanted your version of the game. I remember trying to educate you that the world governing body is called FIFA and not FISA, when you referred to football as soccer. All that is water that has gone down under bridge near the Three Rivers Stadium where we first met”.

“You set another record by dying in the public view not in an accident. The event was captured on tape for posterity. Do you realise that you are a great man? Oh, how I love cell phones! No one can escape a crime with impunity because documentary evidence will circulate on social media. The criminal justice system might fail you, but the popular opinion will know the truth.

The latest poll says two thirds of your country people are supporting the revolution you started at death. Now that you have seen the “janitors of Shadowland’ (Job 38; 17) you have answered your call even if prematurely. I guess the folks in heaven were expecting you. Farewell my younger brother from another mother in America. We shall meet again.

Floyd was buried on Tuesday at Houston Memorial Gardens, where he was laid besides his mother. Ends