The past weekend began on a good note, and should have ended just as well. Saturday, in particular, was a joyous day, at least for me. My kin celebrated the spoils of matrimony, and what a joy it was. The weekend was, however, set to end on a grave note. Richard Josiah, a professional colleague and friend, closed his eyes, never to open them in this life again.
We met in the mid-nineties at law school and he was two classes before me. Rich boasted a distinct and easily recognizable figure. He competed, favorably, with the tallest among us, and was not denied the challenge of weight. On the question of pigmentation, he was unmistakably African. It was for these combined qualities that a mutual friend would christen him Kabila, a name, which, in no way, resonated with his disposition.
Our meeting in 1995 provided a platform for shared experiences. The inevitable society that came with belonging to the same academic discipline often took us to the dusty soccer fields east of the national stadium where this gentle giant attempted, with little success, to convince us of his non legal abilities. Away from the soccer fields, our paths regularly converged at the UB Old Lecture Theatre, where the faithful, almost daily, met to celebrate Calvary. In this circle, and in life, generally, Rich combined the seemingly mutually exclusive qualities of assertiveness and restraint.
He could sink into a supercharged crowd of the faithful, or a near riotous assembly of the studentry, only to file out at the end, without a word. And yet, sometimes, Rich came to town on combat mode, but only, of the more agreeable art of persuasion. He was a man firmly set in conviction and principle. A jurisprudence lecturer illustrated once to our law class that Rich, often, emphatically quoted the Bible in his legal essays. All this, he did, in a discipline where you are drilled into believing that simple morality has no place in discourse.
He spoke because he had something to say and only rarely, if ever, because he had to say something. I was privileged, in 1998, to occupy a seat next to him in a meeting of the student Christian Union Executive Committee. In the quite recesses of my mind and often, with friends, I reminisce over a time when he held committee proceedings, for hours, on a point, demanding that cause be shown why a particular clergyman could not be admitted into the carefully screened line up of preachers. The emphatic answer, was that an objection had been entered by a fellow committee member and the member had requested, on grounds of confidentiality, not to disclose the reason. According to Rich, if the ground was confidential, then, it was incapable of objective screening, with the corollary that the merits for the exclusion were unascertainable. The cleric, he demanded, should be included. When Rich dug in on a position, the lights shone until morning.
In the same year, 1998, as student leaders, we travelled together to Swaziland for the inter-varsity games. He was the Justice Minister and I was, then, the Secretary General of the Student Representative Council. Ours was not a free ride on the University ticket. We had the added task to represent the University in the inter-varsity mock trials that were a part of the collegial event. Two years his junior, I deferred to him. On arrival in Swaziland, we discovered that the Swazis had ordered things rather curiously. We had been slated, in terms of the negotiated schedule, to go against them first, and then, Lesotho. The Swazis had shifted the line up of judges such that our meeting with them would be before their very lecturers. It could not have mattered to me. A contest was, after all, a contest. I spent long hours trying to persuade Rich to accept the new arrangement. Sometimes trying to win Richard over on a point was like trying to pick mercury with a fork. It just didn’t work. He needed to know why the schedule had been changed without necessary consultation and further, what had informed the changes. If the Swazis had no good cause to show, they could as well debate themselves. He insisted that he would not get involved in the vanity of what he considered to be a fixed contest. He was, nonetheless, prepared to debate the Swazi’s before the two Swazi Justices who had been enlisted to add dignity to the event, and not the ‘biased’ lecturers who had glory to gain from the unworthy triumph of their mischievous charges.
The Swazi’s stood their ground, citing reasons of convenience. Rich stood his ground, citing reasons of fairness. In the end, we debated Lesotho before a ‘bench’ of senior lawyers drawn from the Swazi bar. When the Swazis apologized the next day, and sought our further participation, they must have assumed that they would find him more conciliatory. That was not to be. The mock trials, put together with immense labor, and at great expense, were reduced to naught.
The last time I saw him was only two months ago in Francistown. We had descended upon that cosmopolitan town to share in his grief on the passing away of his wife whom I had also known, and befriended, from our university days. After the funeral, as is traditional, we saw him, empathy and bid him farewell. He never struck me as one who was unwell or one over whom I could now be painfully typing a tribute. Against the contours of grief that defined his face, he still managed to curl his lips into a faint reassuring smile. I left comforted, thanking God that at least, he would have the strength to take care of his infants. Surely, I thought, if he could afford to contort a smile on such a clearly battered face, he still had hope to move on. I was, after all, like most who attended on that day, no stranger to grief. By a heart freshly rent apart by a grave upon which the sun daily rises, I had to acknowledge that no grief could compare to one occasioned by the loss of a dear wife, all so early, all so tragically. As friends and I commenced the journey back South, we could never have known that death had his sights fixedly trained upon dear old Rich. We must have underestimated the vicissitudes of life. There are issues beyond man’s comprehension, best left to the sweet bye and bye. While we live and breathe, we can only share the comfort of Dr Martin Luther King Jr., that; ‘death is not a blind alley to a state of nothingness, but a comma that punctuates life, before a loftier existence’.
Attorney Richard Josiah plied his trade in the cosmopolitan city of Francistown, where, until his passing away, he was a notable member of the private bar. His early death has deprived our justice system of a potent voice. Four hundred kilometers apart, I was waiting for my luck to do a case with him, and what a precious memory that would have been. But I have been there, on occasion, when he stood up in the defence of those who had purchased his humble voice. I have admired his skill, his passion and his commitment to our noble calling and felt privileged to have met with and known him. The legal fraternity reels in shock and grief of one of its finest sons, a truly learned friend. When, I heard that he had passed on, in my vain efforts to make sense of the whole issue, the fist stanza of a sonnet by Edward Majoribanks M.P., standing in shock at the passing away of the legendary English Barrister, Sir Edward Marshall Hall, played in my mind;
‘Fold the worn silk; and let the wig be laid
Into its battered box; their use is done
For ever: now the final cause is won,
The long term closes; the last speech is made.
No prisoner at the Bar may seek his aid;
No judge will hear him now: beneath his flail
No witness now shall writhe ÔÇô no felon quail,
No jury by his eloquence be swayed.’
Rich was given to us for fewer than two score years. He lived his life with dignity and an abounding spirit of humanity. The fear of God, was his faultless compass. With it, he navigated the treacherous terrain of human relations with humility and kindness. His earthly sojourn, from the vantage point of any observer, can well be considered short. But the Lord who allowed it must have been content, in his wisdom, of the sufficiency of his years. To those he met, the warmth of his touch will endure beyond this biting winter of grief. To those near and dear to him, it is fitting to remember, as William Cullen Bryant did, that, ‘behind the dim unknown standeth God within the shadows, Keeping watch above his own.’ His clients will remember him as a defender. Lawyers will remember him as a colleague and friend. To some he was a son, a brother and an uncle. To his children, by the time of their adult years, he will probably only be a story. One that I will be, if longevity be my portion, all be too humbled to tell.
Gloria in excelsis Deo.
Bye Counsel.
