Nevanji Munyaradzi Chiondegwa
Daunte Demetrius Wright
Marvin David Scott III
Angelo Quinto
Andre Maurice Hill
Angelo “AJ” Crooms
Marcellis Stinnette
Sincere Pierce
Jonathan Dwayne Price
Dijon Durand Kizzee
David McAtee
Tony “Tony the Tiger” McDade
These names sound like names of a first draft pick or the names of a ravelling basketball or volleyball team, right up until you add George Perry Floyd and there is a chilling silence that permeates a room.
For a while, everyone goes quiet and then the explosion of anger, sadness, tears, feeling of loss and above all helplessness.
There is a collective feeling is: “WE CAN’T BREATHE”
“I CAN’T BREATHE” were George Perry Floyd’s last words to the world.
He died, with the gloating face of Derik Chauvin facing facing cameras, knee pressed on his neck.
It was not in some third world country nor was it even in feudal Europe or the days of the Wild west conquest, in itself a story that needs to be revisited, no, it was in The United States of America.
It was in the 21st Century in 2020 on May 25, that George Perry Floyd was murdered by the system. He was choked to death by the system. The American system took his breathe away. It suffocated him leading him to his death.
This is May, the month we lost our brother to the American ruthless and anti-black system.
This is the month when The Black Lives Matter Movement was born. The time the whole world’s attention was finally brought to the attention of the attention of the systematic murder and extermination of black people in the USA.
The country that prides itself in democracy and has appointed itself police officer of the world is itself a killing zone for people of colour. This is may the month we celebrate Africa Day.
The killing of George Perry Floyd was an intentional act meant to send message to Africa and to black people the world over that you will forever die from suffocation or asphyxiation.
With our knee knee on your necks. The American system of governance has no place for a black man to prosper. So many black people have died in America.
The roll of those that have died on the streets of America from police brutality reads longer than the number of blacks that were killed in Vietnam. The number of promising young man that have lost lives to murder, execution style on American streets by police officers is scary to say the least.
They all could not breathe in the end.
The same America that sanctions Zimbabwe for the death of what it calls civilians on 1 August 2018 will choose to explain away the death of a black man in America down to other reason.
They would rather put it down to his poor choices of living, how he was brought up, his education, drug issues, heart but never to the actual cause; he was choked to death! They have many nice terms to say; “a black man deserves to die for no compensation”.
One must not be quick to forget how they tried to divert the world’s attention from their real problem by creating perceived problems in Zimbabwe.
Using local quislings and some relics of Rhodesia, they created a counter Zimbabwean Lives matter hashtag as if there was ever a time that
Zimbabwean lives have never mattered.
We mourned our people and still do who were killed by racist Rhodesians with American weapons at Chimoio, Doroi, Mukushi Freedom Camp, Tembue, Nyadzonia and other far too many places scattered all over Southern Africa.
America has never formally apologised for slavery nor even compensated the blacks who were shipped from Africa under dehumanising and debasing conditions.
Blacks in America continue to live worse than animals and yet the American system ignores that. They do not look at the reasons why blacks behave and act in a certain manner but if a white young man kills several black people, Jews or Chinese, they will all become psychologists trying to explain it away.
They do not see deviant behaviour or criminal behaviour but choose to explain it away as caused by something else other than their faulty system.
That George Floyd and the rest of the black world cannot breathe because they have their knee on our necks, they have us in a choke-hold will not register to the Americans. It will not register because it does not serve American interests.
We all remember Jamal Kasshoggi who was brutally killed by Saudi Authorities. The American reaction was a US$15 billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia. Never mind that Kasshoggi was a correspondent of an American Newspaper, The Washington Times.
The Israelis are bombing the Palestines left, right and centre, indiscriminately killing all and sundry. The Americans pay a blind eye to that..
When Zimbabwe took a decision to protect its sovereignty, to ensure peace and stability, to stop acts of domestic terrorism arising, illegal sanctions were extended.
George Floyd was killed on 25 May.
Countries in Africa used to celebrate it as Nelson Mandela Day in recognition of his getting freedom from the apartheid South African system which the Americans had aided and abetted.
Today, it is celebrated as Africa day, the day when Black pride on the Black continent must take centre stage. The day we come into our own but on 25 May 2020, the little oxygen God had allowed George Floyd was brutally cut off from him. Even as a nine-year-old child could tell that Derik Chauvin was stopping his breathing and hurting George Floyd, that did not alter a thing. Derik Chauvin, the police man sent to murder a black man and send a message to Africa did not move. Even as the paramedics asked him to move, he would not move.
In the words of Darnella Frazer, the young girl at 17 who for nine minutes filmed the execution of George Floyd; “When I look at George Floyd, I look at my dad, I look at my brothers, I look at my cousins, my uncles. Because they are all black. I have a Black father, I have a Black brother, I have Black friends. And I look at that, and I look at how that could have been one of them. It’s been nights I stayed up apologising, apologising to George Floyd for not doing more, and not physically interacting and not saving his life”
The same words we In Zimbabwe, say them to the rest of the black world. The Black Diaspora, our Black African brothers, the Black Continent, “stop watching; WE CAN’T BREATHE.”
Do not wait for us to die before you realise that something is wrong. Do not wait for us to not move any more before you realise you could have done something. Do not stay silent, ACT.
America is choking us: “WE CAN’T BREATHE”
Recent Comments