Sizwe Bansi can have his Name: #ICantBreathe

Sizwe Bansi has died more than enough.
Sizwe has died every minute of our years in the diaspora.

Bansi has been tamed, maimed and slained by friend and foe,

And by kith and kin, home and abroad.
Sizwe Bansi has been crucified enough!

I can’t breathe, is a question of identity,
And poor Floyd had to pay the price,
As many a George before him.

Sizwe Bansi, is a puzzle of inequality;
Deep-seated hatred for the other.
David Dungay also said “I can’t breathe” 12 times before he died in custody.
A knee to a neck, takes a life away.

Many a Floyd has been slained by a knee, where we live.

A David near you, is pleading for his sling;
Saying “I can’t breathe”.

All you have to do, is open your heart,
To hear the cry for equality,
The plea of innocence
And the yearning for an opportunity to breathe.

Taking a knee off the neck of a trudging George on 38th Street and Chicago Avenue, Minneapolis,

Or the diabetic David, the Aborigine,
In the Long Bay jail hospital, South Wales,
Shouldn’t take a nonillion century;
If the knees were human with flesh and blood.

But there comes a time, the knee must go;
The day when Usir decides to rise;
When a nation finally takes a stance;
A long awaited uprising for justice,
Against an institution of knees on a neck.
Children of Osiris must breathe.
It is our birthright to breathe without a guilt.
Sizwe Bansi must have a name.

© GEORGE KWAKU YEBOAH, HO (2020)