Maravi

Opportunism, hero-worshipping and critical thinkers

Opportunism, hero-worshipping and critical thinkers
By Editor
Sunday February 25, 2007 [02:00]

Those who hold power should learn to avoid rewarding opportunism at the expense of critical thinkers. It is not us, The Post, saying this - it is unbelievably Michael Sata saying this! We agree with him. It is a correct position to take. We agree with Sata on this score because one of the biggest hurdles to our progress, apart from the over-quoted colonial legacy and international capitalist conspiracy, is that we are governed by petty-minded politicians obsessed with visions of their own rule, for good or for bad.

They are not content with just running the affairs of the state and providing our people with the necessities of life, but they also want to run the very lives and control the thinking of the citizens they were elected to govern. To agree with everything they say is divine, but to disagree is a crime.

In due course, the phrases “constructive criticism” and “destructive criticism” have been coined in order to place potential opponents or “enemies” in some useful categories to reward the loyalists and punish “malcontents”. The citizen must belong to them or be condemned. The sponsors of this dialectic are not ashamed to attribute enmity where it may not exist. They thrive on the explosive emotions which this dialectic is likely to generate among the unsuspecting men, women and idle youths of low literacy. In fact, no regard is ever had for the patriotism of critics, unless they happen to die.

Very few of our politicians, however educated or intelligent they may appear to be, can differentiate between a critic and an enemy. Where they see a critic, they see an enemy.

In popular philosophy they say, “That is the way of Africa”. That is, tyrannical rulers and uncritical people.

But, what do the phrases “constructive criticism” and “destructive criticism” mean anyway? A keen look at those who use these phrases will invariably show that they get intensely paranoid when they hear criticism. They are so weakly constituted that they fear if they are criticised they will lose their manliness, their constituencies and ultimately, their power. “Constructive criticism” means flattery, agreement and praise of the politician.

Criticism per se is non-existent. Anything else is destructive. Opposition is an expression of hate, not pure disagreement. Again, the people will say, “ This is Africa”, meaning to say that we are incapable of being criticised without feeling rancoured about it. In fact, all the time the impression given is that to criticise is to condemn or curse in the Biblical fashion.

Here is the truth about our politicians. Even the most stupid and crooked will require the press to kneel down and praise their glorious leadership and ignore their bad deeds. The self-righteousness of our politicians is truly embarrassing!

It is quite true that acceptance of criticism implies the highest respect for the human ideal, and that its denial suggests a conscious or unconscious lack of humanity on our part. Intolerance must surely rank as one of the worst forms of immorality in human affairs.

What we are striving to say is that our politicians should take pride in their critics. Until we can allow our people the fullest and unencumbered expression in writing, politics and otherwise, we are in danger of teaching them a very simplified version of this complex universe. A society without critics is a human hell where leaders indulge their anarchical instincts without moral compunction. Our society has very few thinkers. History always tells us the greatest nations respected their thinkers.

True, tyrants all over the world and throughout history have always been terrified of men of ideas, but ultimately more tolerant societies parted ways with their politicians and endorsed the contributions of their geniuses. When our future generations ask themselves who the greatest thinkers were at this stage of our history, what will they find? We are afraid they may come up with none.

When people say that it is alien to our culture, custom or tradition to criticise leaders, they forget that in our traditional past even chiefs or kings were the subject satirical orations, through poetry and ribaldry. Even the ruthless Zulu dictator, Chaka, could be criticised openly. Now, try and criticise the President of this country or any other politician and see what happens to you in the newspapers, on radio and television. And yet we are so fond of justifying our political leadership on our ancestral traditions!

So we are really stuck in a culture of zealous worship of leaders, a culture which would look primitive in the eyes of our ancestors. Our modern societies have established a reputation for intolerance that is difficult to match. To date, people are dissuaded from criticism in several ways. And yet, our traditional society would never have dreamt of all this culture of intolerance. Our heirs will find rather a toiling and sweating horde of malicious rhetoricians, people fondly enslaved to hollow jargon which speech writers willingly provide.

We think that human beings should never draw away from the honest goal they seek and let themselves be influenced by power and a sense of self-importance, glory and vanity.

Moreover, when one reads the history of the peoples and of humanity, remember the things that individuals have done for the sake of self-importance, to make an impression on posterity. Many people in ancient times give us the impression that they did many things in search of a place in history - and this is true of men not only in ancient times but also throughout the last 2,000 years, ever since the birth of Christ.

We are thinking of many leaders and politicians who engaged in great actions, great undertakings, yet one gets the impression that they did so in search of personal prominence and even a role in history.

Others tried to perpetuate themselves by means of monuments. For example, what were the huge monuments in Egypt for - the pyramids and temples? Every Pharaoh built a big pyramid or temple or house to make his mark and be remembered by posterity.

We have often wondered what those great pharaohs - some of who were great warriors, great political figures, great statesmen - would think if they knew that, when their mummies were found, they would wind up in a museum - and not an Egyptian museum, but a museum in New York, Paris or London. We feel rather sad when we think of all that those men did and the tens of thousands of slaves who died while building those things to perpetuate the image or figure of someone and then, after all these years, all that is left is the bitter knowledge that those remains - the remains that were preserved for all eternity - have wound up somewhere else.

If one studies the history of humanity, one will see that all civilisations in all continents constructed large monuments and other big things to perpetuate something, yet now all that remains is the memory of the architecture, of the feats of the engineers who built those things and the materials with which they did the job. Nobody remembers - or even knows, in many cases - who ordered it done.

If one had an opportunity to come in close contact with history and analyse these matters, one will realise that humans tend to make a fool of themselves if they think too much about their self-importance, posterity and the impression they will make on it.

We would say it would be wiser to aspire to a modest, simple, even anonymous place in history, because, if one has a true measure of the power of people as individuals, one will know that it’s so fragile and such a small thing that it really doesn’t make sense to magnify the role of any individual, no matter how intelligent, brilliant or able they may be.

They have been many able, intelligent, meritorious figures in the course of history. We should rather a thousand times think of the place history will assign to the causes and ideas we are defending, to the rights of humanity and to the people’s happiness in the world of the future.

Therefore, we should be unassuming and limit ourselves to doing our duty to the best of our extremely limited possibilities.

If one looks at things this way, it is not possible to entertain the opportunism and hero-worshipping Sata is talking about. Sata’s talk is really good on this score but we have serious doubts if he really believes what he is saying. Probably this is another product of a good speech writer to which Sata has put his signature. But nevertheless the ideals being propounded in Sata’s statement are very noble and worth pursuing.

Labels: DEMOCRACY, EDITORIAL, SATA

posted by MrK @ 3:39 AM