Government determines individual, collective life outcomes

WDR CLEOPAS SIBANDA

HAT is the biggest, most influential, most potent and most magical determinant of your own personal and collective outcomes in life? Is it your personal and collective attitude, desire, commitment, effort, perseverance, character, personality or behaviour? I guess that this is one of the questions which many individuals, parents, teachers and educators alike tend to preoccupy themselves with. It is a given that everyone wants to succeed in life.

It is also a given that every parent would also want their children to succeed in life. Hence it is not amiss that both individual people, parents, teachers and educators may preoccupy themselves with finding, elucidating and defining that magical wand which would guarantee success in life.

There are so many catchy, meaningful, logical, sensible and rational wise quotes about how certain personal attributes can actually determine one’s life outcomes.

ALTITUDE

One such wise saying asserts that ‘it is your attitude which determines your altitude in life.’

This saying is similar to the one which says that ‘A positive attitude will lead to positive outcomes’.These two sayings confidently premise that it is the way you think, the way you view or look at things, your perspective, opinions, approach, posture, pose or stance in and towards life and everything else in it (i.e. in life) which determines whether or not you would succeed. Catherine Pulsifer said that “Life presents many choices, and it’s the choices we make which determine our future.”

This saying premises that our destiny in life is simply a matter of our own personal and individual choices and nothing else. But is this absolutely true and or correct, ladies and gentlemen? Yes, but maybe not entirely true, right?

Another wise saying goes by the old adage that ‘No sweat, no sweet.’ This wise saying alludes to the ‘fact’ that if you do not work hard or sweat it out in life, then you most probably would not get the sweet rewards which you want or seek for. This sounds very catchy, meaningful, reasonable, rational and logical indeed, right? But is it always a given, or is it always a fact, that if you work very hard, or even very, very hard, you would most probably or always get befitting results thereof as well? Again, maybe yes, but also maybe not, right?

Yes, success in life depends on a whole lot of things. It definitely also depends on one’s attitude, choices and work ethics, but it surely does not depend only on these noble virtues alone.

Success, by and large, also depends on the environment in which one operates. In fact, operating or prevailing environmental factors are perhaps the single most important determinants of success or failure in life regardless of one’s personal attitude, choices or work ethics.

The fact is that success also depends on and is to a large extent determined by the human, social, economic, financial, political and government environment in which one operates.

IMPORTANT

It is true that operating environment or environmental factors play the most important and most determinant roles as to whether one succeeds or fails in one’s life endeavours despite one’s individual attitude, choices or work ethics?

The Darwinian theory of survival of the fittest asserts that it is the most adaptable or adapting individuals or species which would have a higher chance of survival or winning the competition than less adaptable or less adapting ones.

However, the notion of adaptability or adapting tends to give the impression that individuals or individual species involved have a choice to either adapt or perish, and yet that is not entirely true at all.

This is because no one can ever change who they are, or their own basic, natural and inborn characteristics in order to adapt to the needs of a changing world or changed environment.

Rather than being actively adaptable or adapting to the environment, or to the situation at hand, it is a matter of pre-existing suitable or beneficial individual or species specific characteristics which determine whether or not an individual or a given species can survive the completion or the exigencies of the ever changing environment.

For example, during the days of slavery, there was nothing which a black African person could do in order to escape the scourge of slavery. A black person could not adaptably change into a white person in order to avoid being sold out into slavery. In fact, the stronger, healthier and blacker the black African person was, the more likely they were to be sold into slavery just because they were black and African!

The same applied with other racist crimes against humanity such as Apartheid, Nazism and lately, Zionism. Just being born black and African in Apartheid South Africa meant being subjected to extremely violent, murderous, cruel, degrading, inhumane, dehumanising and unbridled treatment such as racism, segregation, repression, oppression, exploitation, murder, legalised enslavement and all other forms of gustily barbarism.

The very same human indignities applied to Jews who lived under Nazism and Arabs who continue to live through Israeli Zionism up to today.

OPPRESSED

There is no amount of adaptability or adapting to those different situations which could save or could have saved the oppressed and exploited black South Africans under Apartheid rule, or the subjugated and murdered Jews under Hitler’s Nazi rule, or the colonised, oppressed, exploited, subjugated and barbarically murdered Palestinian Arabs currently under Israeli Zionist rule.

This is because it is virtually impossible to be adaptable, to adapt to, or to change from being a black African to being a white person, or from being a Jew to being an Arian race German, or from being a Palestinian Arab to being an Israeli Jew.

It is just practically impossible, right? There are certain things in life which one cannot just change willy-nilly.

And there are also certain environmental factors to which one cannot just easily adapt to at all. At the same time, there are also other environmental factors which one cannot just change or adapt to fit one’s own needs or situation just like that.

This bring us to the very important factor of prevailing government systems as environmental factors. For example, many if not most black South Africans and other black Africans of that time who were born and grew up during the reign of the racist Apartheid regime in South Africa did not succeed in life not because of their own wrong attitudes, wrong choices or wrong work ethics.

If anything, these people actually desperately wanted to succeed and to get out of poverty so much so that they could and would do whatever it took to succeed.

However, just because of the black colour of their skin, and the racist Apartheid government environment in which they were born, brought up and operated, they could not succeed in life no matter what they did or could have done! This is a fact, and a very sad fact indeed! The South Africa Apartheid regime institutionalised racism to the extent that at one point in time they even outlawed the teaching of English or Afrikaans to black people.

PAID

They also outlawed the employment of black people in all white and blue collar jobs, and the payment of similar and competitive salaries to whites and blacks who were doing the very same jobs.

In racist governed Rhodesia (now post independent Zimbabwe), my very own black father who was working in the mines was paid ten times less than white people who were doing the very same jobs as him. In fact, he was paid ten times less than his own mining students!

On the other hand, my very own peasant farmer mother was having her maize being compulsorily bought by the racist Rhodesian government for five times less than the amount the very same government paid to white farmers for the same!

If this kind of institutionalised labour and commercial discrimination was not the cause of my father’s working poor and my other’s poor peasant status, then

I do not know what else is! And all this was just due to prevailing government policies!

On top of racist discrimination at the work place, there was also racist discrimination in schools and in life in general. Blacks were not allowed to purchase houses or stay in certain whites only areas.

They were also not allowed to own certain properties such as commercial farms, mines and other businesses. All these things were designed and done by the ruling government of the day. There was absolutely nothing which any black person could do to adapt to the situation and to see themselves succeeding under such institutionalised racism. No amount of the right attitude, good choices or hard word could see a black person succeeding in these circumstances, right? Hence, ladies and gentlemen, we have got to agree, right here and right now, that since it is ruling national governments which determine the political, physical, social, economic, financial, religious and other prevailing environmental factors which influence our success or failure in life, then it is them, the very same national governments, which also practically determine whether or not we succeed in life and not just our own personal attitudes, choices or work ethics.

SUCCEED

What room for personal choices do people have or can they make under brutal, dictatorial and tyrannical regimes? What room for personal choices do people have or can they make when all the public services which they need in order to succeed in life such as food security, housing, health, education, transport, communication, safety and security are all substandard or practically non-existent courtesy of ruling national governments?

By how much, and by how far would correct choices, attitude or work ethics help one or one’s children to succeed under such bad circumstances, good people?

Probably none at all, right? Hence the assertion that it is national governments, their nature and their implemented policies, which determine both our individual and collective success and failure in life!

under Ingwenyama. The Ingwenyama and chiefs will exercise ceremonial duties. They should be custodians of Swazi National Land (SNL) together with bobandlancane. When it comes to utilisation of SNL for towns’ development there shall be a consultation process of appropriate stake holders ending in Parliament.

We intend for the Ingwenyama to relinquish executive, judicial and legislative powers to Parliament. He shall also relinquish authority over security forces to Parliament. As a ceremonial Head of State he shall not have authority to appoint public officers except on recommendation of the government of the day.

APPOINTED

State to cater for his birthday celebration, is easters, reed dance, incwala and the remuneration of King and one senior prince appointed in accordance with Swazi Culture and custom/tradition. The reason we should remove the existing structures is because they have not proved their effectiveness in improving the governance of this country for the common good. Next week we look at topics that have to do with government structures. This dialogue is a golden opportunity for us to honestly rebuild Eswatini.