Maravi

Let Barotse Agreement activists hold their rallies

Let Barotse Agreement activists hold their rallies
By The Post
Wed 05 Jan. 2011, 04:00 CAT

PROTEST rallies, demonstrations and other similar assemblies are a testing ground for any democracy. The ideals of free expression and citizen participation are easy to defend when everyone remains polite and in agreement on basic issues.

But protesters and other dissenters – and their targets – do not agree on basic issues, and such disagreements may be passionate and angry. The challenge then is one of balance: to defend the right to freedom of speech and assembly, while maintaining public order and countering attempts at intimidation of violence.

To suppress peaceful protests or assemblies in the name of order is to invite repression; to permit uncontrolled violent protest or assembly is to invite anarchy.

There is no magic formula for achieving this balance.

In the end, it depends on the commitment of the majority to maintaining the institutions of democracy and the precepts of individual rights.

Democratic societies are capable of enduring the bitterest disagreement among its citizens – except for the disagreement about the legitimacy of democracy itself.

This is the situation we find ourselves in as far as the situation in Western Province, especially in Mongu, is concerned.

There’s growing tension in Mongu over the issue of the Barotse Agreement and its advocates or activists.

Over the last few weeks, we have seen the worst forms of intimidation over this issue.

First from the police refusing the activists of the Barotse Agreement the enjoyment of their inalienable rights of speech and assembly.

They have not been allowed to meet and express themselves.

Second, the activists of the Barotse Agreement themselves have been intolerant of other people’s enjoyment of their rights to freedom of speech and assembly.

They stoned and disrupted Charles Milupi’s political rally in Mongu simply because they didn’t agree with his message.

Charles was not speaking their language and for that reason, they resorted to violence and intimidation against him and those who were with him.

Things did not end here. This led to the disturbance of peace and destruction of property in Mongu town.

Marketeers lost their money and merchandise, fleeing from the chaos.

Motor vehicles were damaged, leaving their owners frightened, angry and injured.

It is said that those who seek equity, fairness should come with clean hands.

The activists of the Barotse Agreement have the right to express themselves and hold rallies to propagate their views to others.

Those who are opposed to what they are doing also have the right to accordingly express their views against them.

None of them should be suppressed.

We say this because a suppression of the speech that we find offensive today is potentially a threat to our exercise of free speech tomorrow – which perhaps we or others might find offensive or unacceptable.

All people are harmed when speech is repressed.

If what is being said or what they want to say is right, we are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth.

If it is wrong, we lose the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth produced by its collision with error.

The corollary of freedom of speech is the right of the people to assemble and peacefully demand that the government hear their grievances.

Without this right to gather and be heard, freedom of speech would be devalued.

For this reason, freedom of speech is considered closely linked to, if not inseparable from, the right to gather, protest and demand change.

Democratic governments can legitimately regulate the time and place for political rallies and matches to maintain the peace, but they cannot use that authority to suppress protest or to prevent dissident groups from making their voices heard.

There’s really no need to continue denying activists of the Barotse Agreement the right to hold rallies.

Let them hold their rallies while we all patiently and calmly watch and listen to what they are doing and saying.

In this way, we will understand them better.

And the better we understand them, the better we will be able to deal with them.

Human beings possess a variety of sometimes contradictory desires. People want safety, yet relish adventure; they aspire to individual freedom, yet demand social equality.

Democracy is no different, and it is important to recognise that many of these tensions, even paradoxes, are present in every democratic society.

A central paradox exists between conflict and consensus. Democracy is in many ways nothing more than a set of rules for managing conflict.

At the same time, this conflict must be managed within certain limits and result in compromises, consensus or other agreements that all sides accept as legitimate.

An overemphasis on one side of the equation can threaten the entire undertaking.

If groups perceive democracy as nothing more than a forum in which they can press their demands, the society can shatter from within.

If the government exerts excessive pressure to achieve consensus, stifling the voices of the people, the society can be crushed from above.

Again the answer is that there is no single or easy answer.

Democracy is not a machine that runs by itself once the proper principles and procedures are inserted.

A democratic society needs the commitment of citizens who accept the inevitability of conflict as well as the necessity of tolerance.

It is for this reason that the culture of democracy is so important to develop. Individuals and groups must be willing, at a minimum, to tolerate each other’s differences, recognising that the other side has valid rights and a legitimate point of view.

The various sides to a dispute can then meet in a spirit of compromise and seek a specific solution that builds on the general principle of majority rule and minority rights.

Coalition-building is the essence of democratic action.

It teaches interest groups to negotiate with others, to compromise and work within the constitutional system.

By working to establish coalition, groups with differences learn how to argue peaceably, how to pursue their goals in a democratic manner and ultimately how to live in a world of diversity.

As to those of the Barotse Agreement activists who are pushing for the right to self-determination based on a tribalistic or ethnic ideology, we can only urge them to rethink their position and deeply meditate over this issue.

We say this because tribalism or ethnocentrism is a deformed form of nationalism.

The claim to the right to self-determination based on tribalistic or ethnic ideology is destructive. A sense of nationalism that is built upon ethnic intolerance is destructive.

We say this because this is the competitive and excessive exaltation of one’s own tribe. It seeks to assert its superiority over the others.

The Christian vision is universal, with all human beings seen as brothers and sisters within one family.

It is not necessary that our tribe should be superior to others’ tribes in anything.

It is enough that it be faithful to its own identity and purposes, that it contributes what it can to the common cause and receive the contributions of others in a mutual collaboration and exchange.

All through history, tribalism has been the cause of innumerable wars.

Among the tribes, as among individuals, dignity is a virtue and pride is a vice.

Tribes, like countries, are not closed groups.

They are but a small part of wider society: that of the human race. It is not by segregating ourselves from those who are different that we shall preserve our own particular achievements.

It is by sharing them that we become richer.

Refusing to share our achievements is one form of under-development; refusing to learn from others is another.

We should open our minds and hearts to the human values to be found in the language, customs and culture of the people who are round about us.

Nationalism is a true and well thought-out love of one’s country, an expression of fraternal love, of solidarity and of service to the common good.

There are indications in the Gospel that Jesus loved his own small country, so little thought of and maltreated at his time.

He shared its destiny, its sufferings, its humiliations.

He was completely an Israelite: his physical appearance, his clothes, his language, his customs, the examples which he gave, the stories which he told, his style of speaking, his whole way of life showed that he was a Jew, faithful to his race and to his people.

As our Lord loved his country, so we love ours and wish it to have peace, prosperity and a fully representative government in which everyone shares.

Nationalism, like many other good things, can be deformed or distorted.

This fact should put us on guard against those dangers which weaken national unity.

The first deformation is to be found in the narrowing of the scope of true nationalism, when it is reduced to fostering the interests of only one section or group of the inhabitants of our country.

Some have wished to identify nationalism with unrestricted adherence to a particular type of government, or even to a specific ruling party.

Others consider true nationalism to be the perpetuation of the spirit and form of a particular historical epoch.

There are those who attribute a monopoly of nationalism to a single sector of the community, an influential sector, without doubt, but one which cannot pretend to exhaust the human reality of our country.

No single sector has a monopoly of deciding what true national interests are.

Nationalism should be expressed in actions, in daily works and tasks, in justice and in solidarity.

We should cultivate a loyal spirit of patriotism, but without narrow-mindedness, so that we keep in mind the welfare of all our people.

Good leaders must be interested in the welfare of those in distress.

We expect them to feel the distress of many who have a big problem about the cost of goods, education, medicine, with tragedy of unemployment, of youth, and so many other important concerns.

All these are difficult problems for any government to face but to solve them, we need hard-working and public-spirited politicians, especially those in government; we need people of courage who will defend the truth and demand justice for the poor and others.

This is the situation in Western Province.

There’s distress in this province. It is a province that ranks the lowest in almost every economic or development indicator. This needs to be addressed.

This is what is leading to and fuelling the tension that we are today witnessing in Mongu and other parts of the Western Province of our country.

These problems need to be addressed urgently; the people whose emotions are running highest and who are losing patience in the current constitutional order of our country and are seeking to break with it need to be engaged, need to be talked to respectfully.

Cheap denunciations of these people, harassment of these people, arrests, detentions and prosecutions of these people won’t do because these measures, by themselves, will not clear away the problems that have given birth to these emotions, to this tension. Leadership – both at the political and traditional level – is urgently needed.

And judging by the record of the past, it is clear that the two most decisive factors affecting the future unity of our country, consolidation and expansion of democracy in our country will be economic development and political leadership.

We say this because economic development makes national unity and democracy possible; political leadership makes them real.

Labels: BAROTSELAND AGREEMENT, MONGU

posted by MrK @ 3:44 AM