Maravi

Blame nobody but yourselves

Blame nobody but yourselves
By The Post
Tue 10 July 2012, 13:25 CAT

JOSEF Brodsky, Russian-born poet and Nobel Prize winner, once wrote, "A free man, when he fails, blames nobody." It is true as well for citizens of an independent country who, finally, must take responsibility for the fate of their country, their nation, the society in which they themselves have chosen to live. In the end, we get the government we deserve. Our democracy, our multi party political dispensation, in itself, guarantees us nothing.

We can talk and talk and talk; we can oppose and oppose and oppose; we can criticise and criticise and criticise. But as Elias Chipimo Jr has correctly observed, this, in itself, will not change anything - simply criticising the government won't change anything. Moreover, who is government? What is government? Government is us - every one of us is government and government is every one of us. Ultimately, this is what government is.

Our democratic politics, our multi party politics offers us instead the opportunity to succeed as well as the risk of failure. In Thomas Jefferson's ringing but shrewd phrase, the promise of democracy is "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness".

Therefore, our democratic politics, our multi party political dispensation is then a promise and challenge. It is a promise that free human beings, working together, can govern themselves in a manner that will serve their aspirations for personal freedom, economic opportunity and social justice.

It is a challenge because the success of the democratic enterprise rests upon the shoulders of each citizen, individually and collectively, and on no one else. Government of and by the people means that we as citizens of a democratic society share in its benefits and in its burdens.

This being the position, we cannot resign ourselves to just complaining, to just criticising, to just denouncing or haranguing others. We all have a job to do; we all some responsibilities to bear. We all have a contribution to make. You cannot build a society purely on the basis of entitlement, expecting others to do everything for you. Mealy-mouthed shedding of responsibility and blaming everything on others is unacceptable irresponsibility.

We have to accept responsibility for what is not going well, for what is wrong in our country, in the way we are governing the affairs of our country. We have to accept these things as wrongs we have committed against ourselves. If we accept things as such, it will not be difficult for us to understand that it is up to us all, and up to us only to do something to correct the situation and move our country forward.

We cannot blame others for everything; we cannot criticise others without being self-critical. This is wrong. And it is not only wrong because it's untrue, but it is also wrong because it blunts the duty each of us faces today, the obligations each of us has to the governance of our country and our obligations to act independently, freely, reasonably and quickly.

And as Vaclav Havel, the playwright who was elected Czech president in 1989, once observed, "let us not be mistaken: the best government in the world, the best parliament and the best president, cannot achieve much on their own. And it would also be wrong to expect a general remedy from them only. Freedom and democracy include participation and therefore responsibility from us all".

As Chipimo says, we should not "expect someone to do things for us but we should be the ones, even if things are wrong, even if someone is responsible for having created some of the problems we are experiencing, there is still something we as individuals can do at every level of society".

And moreover, what is the meaning of democracy? The true meaning of democracy is a growth in the confidence in the power of ordinary people to transform their country, and thus transform themselves. It is a growth in the appreciation of people organising, deciding, creating together.

It is the growth in fraternal love. We have to work together. We have to take responsibility. We cannot be sustained by the work of others. We have to rely on our own work. What others do for you can only sustain you for a few months, at the end of which your problems remain. It is what we make out of what we have, not what others do for us or not what we are given, that separates us.

And we shouldn't look at our political representatives as special people, coming from some special place. These are not special people, they are the same with us, they are coming from the same homes that we come from. And if they are products of the same homes, whatever vices, whatever deficiencies we have, they are also likely to have them.

If our homes are not being run properly and without high standards, principles and values, our national politics will also carry these deficiencies. 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. What we are advocating is rooted in a straightforward view of society. We cannot have a government that is better than us its creators.

If we are bad, we should also expect our government to be bad. If we have low standards, principles and values, so will be our government. This is so because ours is a government of the people, by the people, for the people; it is a government that arises from the people. To get a better society we have to start at the family level.

A better society starts in our own homes; that's where its seeds are planted. And the nation we have is simply a collection of families and their behaviours. Virtues must be nourished at every level.

We are perfectly capable of governing ourselves well. What we need is to exert ourselves much more and break out of the vicious cycle of depending on others. However, the challenge for us is to move from talking too much, wagging our tongues endlessly with rhetoric to action, and action at an unprecedented intensity and scale.

We should therefore be careful and critical of people who just talk and talk, who just criticise and criticise. Some of them do this to divert attention from their own faults and weaknesses and pretend to be critical, demanding when they are really nothing but opportunists trying to avoid being called on to account for themselves.

And in saying this, we must emphasise, we are not in any way discouraging anyone from criticism. If criticism is valid, it must be made. But also to criticism, there is need to add self-criticism because we are all participants and stakeholders in this undertaking and as a result, none of us is free from criticism and responsibility.

Labels: ELIAS CHIPIMO

posted by MrK @ 3:40 PM