Maravi

'Vengeance is not yours'

'Vengeance is not yours'
By Editor
Wednesday April 30, 2008 [04:00]

It seems genuine goodness is threatening to those at the opposite end of the moral spectrum. Our daily deeds as ordinary Zambians must produce an actual Zambian reality that will reinforce our belief in justice, strengthen our confidence in the nobility of the human soul and sustain all our hopes for a glorious life for all.

It is very pleasing to hear an old man who lost a beloved son in what can clearly be described as a political assassination, urge his people not to embrace the spirit of vengeance. In other countries and with other people, the death of Major Wezi Kaunda would have sparked riots, political turmoil and further loss of lives. This is a death that the previous regime should have been made to account for.

In other places and with other people, this issue could have been broadened and deepened and turned into a very big political issue. There would have been vengeance. But Dr Kenneth Kaunda made sure that the death of his son was not used to bring political turmoil in the country. He took it with a lot of tolerance, humility and forgiveness. All along, he has been saying vengeance is not his.

We know it is hard to understand, but sometimes painful things like this happen.
It can also not be denied that agents of the previous regime attempted to assassinate him. Again, he has not advocated vengeance against the representatives or leaders of that regime.

It is said that political competitors don’t necessarily have to like each other, but they must tolerate one another and acknowledge that each has a legitimate and important role to play. And moreover, the ground rules of society must encourage tolerance and civility. We started to see a decline of this in the last regime. It is surprising that the murders of political figures that characterised the last regime have almost stopped. Under that regime, we lost so many people under what appeared to be political deaths. But now, we are not experiencing any of that. What has happened or rather what has changed? Things seem to be so quiet now, no one seems to be dying from politically engineered murders or accidents.

There is no need for us to hate each other to such levels where we start to physically eliminate each other. Each one of us has the right to live and must live. Neither the blow of the whip nor the voice of insult should teach us to hate. Let us not despise each other, since we cannot hate anyone. Let us not preach, in any way, hatred as a philosophy, the philosophy of hatred. But this doesn’t mean that we should have any friendly feelings for criminals or regimes that do criminal things or we shouldn’t struggle against such criminals or such regimes.

There are people like Dr Kaunda who have suffered terribly at the hands of such criminal individuals and their regimes, but yet when they meet such elements they treat them with respect because they don’t want to hate them. What they repudiate and hate are their acts or deeds, the system they represent; it is a matter not of hating individuals but of hating their iniquitous deeds; it is not hatred of individuals. And we would encourage everyone to fight against such evil deeds or practices with courage and boldness.

However, we are also not speaking about hatred for the individuals but their evil deeds. What we are talking about is the repudiation, rejection, and hatred of evil and criminal deeds – hatred of injustice. We are not preaching hatred among individuals, because in the final analysis, individuals are victims of the system. If we have to fight the system, we will fight the system. If we have to fight the individuals who represent the system we hate, we will do so.

When we were young, in our lessons in biblical history, we used to be told that there were struggles even in heaven, among the angels – and if there were struggles in heaven, how can we fail to understand that there are struggles on earth between good and evil? We were taught that there was a constant struggle between good and evil, and evil had to be punished. We were taught that those who committed crimes and were responsible for injustice, evil, and all those other things that we are fighting against would be punished in hell. And could that be interpreted as an expression of hatred?

What is more, Jesus tells us we must love our enemies – and there is no greater love for a wrong-doer, a criminal, a thief than to prevent him from continuing to do wrong things, commit crimes or steal.

We should be grateful that we have people like Dr Kaunda in our country, people with very high moral standards. The worst thing that has happened to our country is the deterioration in moral standards. We today live in a contaminated moral environment. We fell morally ill because we became used to saying something different from what we thought. We learned not to believe in anything, to ignore each other, to care only about ourselves.

Concepts such as love, friendship, compassion, humility or forgiveness lost their depths and dimensions, and for many of us, they represented only psychological peculiarities, or they resembled gone-astray greetings from ancient times, a little ridiculous in today’s Zambia. And as we have stated before, the individual does best in a strong and decent community of people with principles and standards and common aims and values.

It is not hatred alone which is contrary to the laws of charity but also indifference to the welfare of our neighbour. When people think only of themselves, then there is a big problem in the nation.

We must work unceasingly to lift this nation to a higher destiny, to a new plateau of compassion and love. We should care about each other all the time.

If we live a life devoid of vengeance and hatred, our reward will come in the life of freedom, peace and hope our children will enjoy through ages ahead. Let us strive to have hearts that are clean, goals that are high; to be modest so that we will remember the simplicity of true greatness, the open minds of true wisdom, the meekness of true strength. Let us start to believe quite simply in the brotherhood of man – men of all races, of all colours, of all tribes, of all creeds. We think it is this that must be at the centre of our thinking.

Labels: CHILUBA, KENNETH KAUNDA

posted by MrK @ 4:28 AM