Case for ethics, civil education
Human beings need to have agency and help shape their circumstances. The idea of being dragged along like clueless and helpless victims does not enhance creativity and production. We ought to be creators of our own destiny.
DO YOU sometimes wonder why folktales have endings that fit snuggly into the reward and punishment paradigm? Sometime in the early part of the second half of the 20th century, Doris Day did a song called ‘Everybody loves a lover’. The antithesis of that is that everybody loves it when an anti-social person has their comeuppance, when they have a taste of their own medicine.
Doris Day became a huge Hollywood star as well as a revered recording artiste. ‘Que sera sera’ (What will be will be) is perhaps one of her most enduring hits. Despite the philosophical appeal in these words they cannot be encouraged because of their inherent defeatism.
Human beings need to have agency and help shape their circumstances. The idea of being dragged along like clueless and helpless victims does not enhance creativity and production. We ought to be creators of our own destiny.
This is the context in which Kwame Nkrumah argued that Africans had a right to manage or mismanage their own affairs.
But back to my theme. Reward and punishment as a construct is based on seeing everything in binary terms. It is either “this” or “that” or nothing. Disciples of this thinking are always loud and shrill in their pronouncements. They seem oblivious of the fact that we live on shifting sands and cannot of ourselves guarantee the permanence of our ideas and institutions.
Looked at this way, America and her cronies, like other empires before them, will fall. It is in the nature of empires to crack and fall. It is also the reason why the future is beckoning to Africa.
There is something fatalistic about saying what will be will be. Nevertheless it is true. All things move to some kind of conclusion or resolution according to which justice is in some way done. We must all at some time have heard about “poetic justice.”
The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines poetic justice as “an outcome in which vice is punished and virtue rewarded usually in a manner peculiarly or ironically appropriate.”
The dictionary exemplifies this as follows: After the way he treated his staff, it was poetic justice that he lost his job. The dictionary also says poetic justice is “a result or occurrence that seems proper because someone who has done bad things to other people is being harmed or punished.”
Without doubt there are lots of occurrences in the world that speak of poetic justice. Across the years some people have outdone themselves by way of the nature and content of their criminal activities.
The notorious Msomi gang and Boy Faraday were in their day an expression of all that was wrong with apartheid South Africa. This could be the reason why Harrison Tenpas said:
“The systematic segregation that took place in South Africa during apartheid has left a lasting imprint on the nation as a whole. It’s a country with complicated race relationships that stretch back years and even centuries. The rise of gangs in South Africa can be traced to the Group Areas Act of 1950, which displaced black people from their homes and expelled them to designated regions.
“Forced into overcrowded areas, the population was driven to in-fighting and eventually splintered into gangs. Membership is on the rise in South Africa in 2013, police estimated that there were 100 000 gang members in the Western Cape Province.”
When such unsavoury characters meet their demise there are many who sigh in relief. It felt good to know that one could (for a while anyway) walk the streets of Soweto and not risk being shot by a drunken Boy Faraday after one of his many orgies at shebeens. In such cases people can speak of poetic justice and may even talk about how those who live by the sword die by the sword.
There are many other incidences in life that are deserving of the label of poetic justice. When, for example, stepmothers take it upon themselves to ill-treat children that are not biologically theirs. They do this almost as if they have a “sacred” duty to be despicable and cruel beyond description. The laws of the land do not always help either and this may be one way of making a case for the teaching of law as a way of empowering citizens.
The South African model of street law is a very good example of such an intervention. Take the case in which a woman and her husband build a life together and acquire property. The woman dies and leaves children behind. Her widower husband becomes an eligible catch for women in search of easy fortune and comfort.
Once they succeed in establishing a relationship with the man in question they play the part of the loving and compliant partner to perfection and go so far as to promise the man heaven on earth. This situation is vividly captured in John Chibadura’s reggae piece “Mudiwa Janet” in which a disgruntled and disillusioned husband wails:
Could this be you Janet, treating me so shoddily? Is this you Janet, doing this to me After your promise to be a mother to my children?
Too often stepmothers and stepfathers too, turn out to be mere gold-diggers. They live in hope to be the surviving spouse who then inherits everything. It does not take long after the demise of her “beloved” husband for her to show her true colours.
It starts with little things such as not feeding the bereaved children and giving preferential treatment to her own children by the same man. This soon graduates to bigger and more hurtful things like jeopardising the education of the children by neglecting to pay their school fees.
And if it so happens that these unfortunate children embark on self-help projects their earnings are confiscated and carelessly spent on trivial things. Girl children are told to fend for themselves. But while they remain under what she now calls her roof they are more or less enslaved. All the hard household chores are their responsibility. These malevolent stepmothers create a hell on earth for the children of other women and spoil theirs to pieces with indulgence. Whatever their children desire is granted. These children not only develop oversized egos, but they also acquire a loathsome sense of entitlement.
The converse of evil stepmothers is the brigade of Casanovas who prey on “lonely widows”, creep into their confidence and eventually make themselves so indispensable that the woman can deny them nothing. Daddy must be satisfied at all costs. These scheming men have no shame at all.
They are only too willing to benefit from the sweat of other men. The weeping children of the deceased man can all go to hell for all they care. In some cases they even bring their “wild oats,” sown in their numerous escapades. The doting woman complies without question. Does this fit the profiles of people we know, people we have watched robbing children of their inheritance?
This is most probably the case. Accordingly, Zimbabwe needs a strong new ethos.
In circumstances such as those described herein, it is like a slap in the face to a poor student, for example, to be told by a banking institution that they can borrow up to four times what their parent or guardian earns, especially when such a guardian is the stepmother or stepfather described herein. Neither of these two will sign as guarantors. All the affected student can do is to cry and be sad. Authorities can change this very swiftly and let students borrow tuition money on their own cognisance. This was the situation even before independence.
We live in interesting, but equally dangerous times where the enemy is often defined as the older members of society and younger persons of the nation who seem quite unaware that the best mix is inter-generational propel themselves into positions of prominence in the most unsavoury ways.
Aspects of Zimbabwe’s financial crisis can be traced back to these “Mr-Know-itall” characters who in the words of Jean Knight’s song each think of themselves as Mr Big Stuff. These charlatans pretended to have brilliant ideas and swore to make everyone rich and secure through suspicious money schemes.
Their avarice killed what could in time have become splendid innovations. Our education system must do something about this. Civic education and ethics must willy-nilly become part of the curriculum at all levels. This will help us to fashion a new meritocracy in which the mediocre cease to be rewarded and the enterprising are given due recognition.
Corruption and self-interest must be frowned upon and permanently discredited and abandoned. A presidential candidate has vowed to compensate the losses suffered by citizens at the height of the chicanery in the finance houses.
What is not clear is what he intends should happen to associates of his that were culpable in the running down of insurance companies and banking institutions.