Maybe it’s time we give our kids tough love

people who are as old as Bishop Lazi — or older — were typically raised by iron women who were disciples of the social science that prescribed the use of “hammer and tongs” to shape the behaviour, character and attitude of their kids.

THEY ran their households as if they were running a military bootcamp. Discipline was paramount and non-negotiable, and the consequences of unseemly and delinquent behaviour were unfathomably dire.

These women wielded the rod with the same mastery Alick Macheso would wield the bass guitar.

Punishment was obviously calibrated according to age.

The younger you were, the most likely you were to be smacked and, naturally, the older you were, the more suited you became for a thorough thrashing or hiding.

And smacking came with different manuals: It was either administered with the open palm or, depending on the gravity of the offence, by the devastating backhand.

The rod also came in different types, shapes and sizes.

The most favoured was the rod fashioned out of branches of the mulberry tree.

These could deliver the prescribed pain for just the sufficient length of time before they could break.

For young villagers, the most dreaded weapon was those leather straps or cowhide tethers (chitorobho), which, however, were used judiciously and only for unusually grave offences.

While the distinction between what is right or wrong is quite apparent, what made the whole business of being disciplined sometimes unpalatable and unpleasant was the fact that some of the offences were nondescript.

Mark Ngwazi — the pint-sized young sungura maestro — aptly captured this vexing dilemma in his song “Nyaradzo yaBaba”, which is off his album “Nharo neZvinenharo”. He sings:

“Kumira vakuru vakagara kunorovesa/ “Kugara vakuru vakamira kunorevesa/ “Kuchema warohwa nevakuru kunorovesa/ “Kunyarara warohwa navakuru kunorovesa/”

Disciplining our kids is the only way forward

In essence, he simply meant that you couldn’t stand up when the elders were seated, as this was interpreted as disrespectful.

Ironically, you also couldn’t sit down when elders were standing, as this, too, was considered offensive.

This meant you had to follow the lead of the elders.

And, when you were being beaten, you were not supposed to cry out to either canvass for sympathy or force the beatings to stop.

Such an ill-advised stunt would make the beating to increase in intensity, which was not a good thing.

Trying to silently take in the beating was also not advisable, as it could be misread to mean you were trying to be stubborn or the thrashing wasn’t registering as was expected. There was nothing confusing about all this. Those who administered the punishment could read from the way the flogged body twitched and was contorted to know that the session had met its objectives.

Schools didn’t offer any relief, respite or succour either, as the teachers acted in loco parentis (just as the parent).

Tales abound of those pedantic teachers, particularly maths teachers, who could even haunt and hound you in your dreams. Kikikiki. It was horrible!

But it shaped us to become the respectable and successful people we became.

We would greet elders and were always ready to assist those in need.

We learnt to work hard, taking comfort in the dignity of hard, honest work.

Woke brigade

Our world has since changed — and for the worst.

We are now a people that are unmoored to their culture and normative values that used to define us.

The overly liberal hoity-toity woke brigade told us that using a rod to discipline a kid was abhorrent and abominable “physical violence” that was not only uncivilised, but had no place in the 21st century.

Even when they themselves had turned out okay from the beatings they got when they were young, they went on to commission studies to support their new worldview regardless, which is anchored on Western values and belief, if at all that is the case.

They also told us that the best way to raise our kids was to mollycoddle them.

Nxa!

Well, Frantz Fanon, the philosopher, warned us about this before, especially in his book “Black Skin, White Masks”.

In his foreword for the 2008 edition of the book, British-Pakistani scholar and writer Ziauddin Sardar couldn’t have put it any better.

Interpreting the import of Fanon’s work, he wrote: “At first sight, Fanon is rather hard on the ‘black man.’

“He is supposed to be a good nigger who even lacks the advantage of being able to accomplish this descent into a real hell.

“But Fanon’s anger is directed not towards the ‘black man’ but the proposition that he is required not only to be black, but he must be black in relation to the white man.”

He adds: “It is the internalisation, or rather as Fanon calls it epidermalisation, of this inferiority that concerns him. When the black man comes into contact with the white world, he goes through an experience of sensitisation. His ego collapses.

“His self-esteem evaporates. He ceases to be a self-motivated person. The entire purpose of his behaviour is to emulate the white man, to become like him, and thus hope to be accepted as a man.”

Untethered to our moral and ethical values, we have become both radarless and rudderless.

This is what was prophesied by our novelists such as Patrick Chakaipa and Charles Mungoshi when they captured the progressive decay of our morals and values.

We are now living in that world they dreaded the most.

As a result, we have become inured to all sorts of nonsense that we even nonchalantly ignore minors as young as nine-years-old that would be publicly drinking alcohol.

You just have to open our social media platforms, such as X and Facebook, to see how the young are being insidiously corrupted by pornographic material that is consistently fed to their timelines.

It is a disaster.

Worryingly, it is now manifesting in rising incidents of drug and substance abuse.

We should not in the least tolerate the growing problem of drug peddlers and junkies, lest we degenerate and descend into the same mess as Ecuador, where gangs were recently so brazen that they even broke into a TV station.

The problem with waging the war on drugs is that drug dealers often grow so rich and influential that they can afford to pay their way to evade justice.

Unfortunately, there are always some venal public officers in both law-enforcement and the justice delivery system that are willing to sell their souls, which makes the campaign to eliminate this vice treacherous and incredibly difficult.

We’ve to be tough

We should, therefore, go whole hog in the fight against drug abuse and juvenile delinquency in the same way Singapore, under Lee Kuan Yew (1959-1990), went nuclear in promoting Singaporean values and discipline.

His penal system included mandatory jail terms, canning and the death sentence.

Proverbs 23: 13-14 says: “Do not withhold discipline from a child; if you punish them with the rod, they will not die. Punish them with the rod and save them from death.”

Proverbs 29 verse 15 adds: “A rod and a reprimand impart wisdom, but a child left undisciplined disgraces its mother”, while Hebrews 12:11 notes: “For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.”

Say what you want about the controversial methods he used, but Philippine President Rodrigo Durtete was equally tough.

Perhaps it is high time we revisit our time-honoured and tested methods of guaranteeing a morally upright society.

President ED seems to have broached the subject last year when he counselled that “rovai mbama vana vati twasa”.

Senator Tambudzani Mohadi and Chief Witness Chikwaka also once proposed the reintroduction of corporal punishment in schools.

Over the years, this has been datable. In 1982, this mode of punishment was banned, but the ban was lifted in 1985 as some learners were reportedly bullying teachers.

But, as it would later turn out, on February 28, 2017, the High Court ruled that parents and teachers who inflicted corporal punishment on children were in breach of the 2013 Constitution, which guarantees people’s right to protection from “physical or psychological torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment”, as well as “all forms of violence from public or private sources”.

Interestingly, on March 15, 2023, High Court judge Justice Munamato Mutevedzi made an interesting ruling in a case involving Yeukai Graham Mutero, who had been hauled to court for killing her 13-year-old son, Desmond, while trying to discipline him.

“Taking the evidence and the circumstances of this case in their totality, our conclusion is that the accused assaulted the deceased in the normal course of parental discipline,” said Justice Mutevedzi.

“It follows, therefore, that in cases of murder resulting from corporal punishment administered by a parent or other authorised person, it is not enough for prosecution to simply allege assault . . .

“The State must, therefore, lead evidence which tends to show that the accused acted beyond the bounds of moderation.

“Her beating of the deceased remained reasonable. She did not harbour any intention, actual or legal, to hurt the deceased, let alone kill him.”

Make of this what you will, but the Bishop believes something has to give.

Maybe it is time for some tough love, lest we raise Frankenstein’s monsters in the form of spoilt kids that will destroy our society and everything that we have grown to cherish.

Bishop out!