“Sometimes I think the
world is divided into those who have a comfortable relationship with power and
those who have a naturally adversarial relationship with power.” - Arundhati Roy
Saturday,March 12, 2016, set
my grandmother on an unfortunate pinnacle of joy. “If I was there, I would have
spat on them. Huh! We are in power and they can not embarrass us like that.”
Would not really imagine her thick foul tobacco sputum landing on anybody. But that
is my lovely grandmother. Always, willing to die for her belief in a friend in
leadership. In her unfettered support, which is simply a façade of an
uninformed error, that her friend is in power always makes her believe she is
in power too.
In truth, in the
January 2015 elections, my grandmother crossed out the person she disliked the
most. She claims that is what she was taught during some so-called voter
education community workshop. We have never believed her, as she has as a
minimum a Form 5 certificate, and before retirement she was a head teacher of
English. Could be, she is just used to crossing out wrong spellings in English!
I have never really
understood how she is in power. All I know is she spends her days, sweating in
the heat of the noon day sun. The steaming vapour from her seven-days cooking
drums covering her, like the morning mist in the valley. Those that imbibe in
her product often extol her brewing skills, but they never ask themselves why
they always have to immediately run to relieve themselves in the bush. Her
calabashes are putrid. She never bothers to clean them, before she refills
them.
Perhaps, that is what
power does. Putrefying the others, for gain at all costs!
Anyway, at the end of the day, she sits lonely on
her three-legged stool counting the little coins she has made. And, in the
solitude of her Tshaka Zulu – like dwelling, a tear falls as she realizes she
seldom makes enough to met her livelihood needs. In the rainy season, her sleep
is always disturbed, not because she is dreaming of the happy days of her youth
on the Copperbelt. No. It is simply because she has to find a position that is
not directly below the rain falling through the old thatch roof.
When morning comes, to the phone she takes. Like
the swallows take to the skies after a rain storm. And we, the grandchildren,
have a disturbed day. The demands and requests for assistance are uttered
faster than Usain Bolt runs.
Yesterday, I had enough. I simply told her that she
is in power! So she surely should be the one ensuring that we do not have
constrained livelihoods. She should allow us to parade in the regalia
expressing our political choice and not delighting in wanting to bath us in
thick foul tobacco sputum.
Well, that got to her. In her attempt to soothe my
anger, she went into a delirious single-person-audience oratory of how her
friend will soon be organising a conference to reaffirm his abhorrence of
political party violence. She, further, said that he has also demanded that
opposition party leaders emulate him in controlling violence. Adolf Hitler
would have been proud. Sic.
I listened to her unthinking wisdom, the wisdom of
putrefied power, with ears requesting me to shut her up. I could not do that,
however.
The public know, sincerely hope they do, that they
cannot emulate a State president when it comes to matters of law and order.
In hindsight, was her friend talking as a State
president or a party president? If the latter, it is understood and welcome.
However, I am not going to start a sermon on the mountain over it.
If the former, it is unfortunate. He is a State
president, and there is nothing to emulate. He should simply have categorically
stated that the State of Zambia will not tolerate political violence and
chastise those that stripped Priscilla Mwiinga naked, the police officers that
did nothing about it, and the head of the police. Period.
What happened to the State shall protect its
citizens and all those presently resident within its borders? Inarguably, if
the State cannot do so, then this brings into question the State’s allegiance
to protecting its citizens and all those presently resident within its borders
through just maintenance of law and order.
The bottom line is. A State president or any third
party, conceiving an idea of a conference to iron out political party violence
is simply a deliberate invalid argument displaying assumed political ingenuity
in reasoning. It is a delusional hope of deceiving the public. So too, is a State
hollering out to the multitude to emulate it.
A democratic State exists as a body of humans with
defined means of equitable social and political regulation. The State affirms
adherence to the norms actualising these means. It cannot request others to
emulate it in maintaining law and order with respect to violence arising from
political competition, when it is evidently shows favouritism. That is a recipe
for State decay.
Clean the calabash, remove the maggots first, then
I will not run into the bush after imbibing your rhetoric.
I could not tell my grandmother all this. I love
Nana dearly. She typifies the many of us that exist in limbus factuorum. Those that are in putrefied power. Moreover, I
dread the thought of that sputum or her friend falling on me like a ton of
bricks.
O temporal! O more! What times! What manners!
(First published
(First published
