‘Big Man’ fallacy a problem

In SA, and maybe this applies to the rest of the continent, we have a tendency to do two things: We have a Big Man syndrome and a tendency to make the least important things, important.

We tend to spend an inordinate amount of time worrying about things that we should only, in reality, be spending a couple of minutes on.

In the last few weeks we have seen a lot of movement in the political arena with the elites of our country fighting for a place in the front of the queue.

When you look closely at these characters now invading so much of our space, trying to convince us of their second coming as messiahs, you begin to wonder if we really know what we are doing.

This is where the Big Man syndrome kicks in.

We are too willing to abdicate our responsibilities as responsible and active citizens to a Big Man and hope that all our problems, even though we have not properly tabulated them, will be solved by him.

This behaviour has led us to where we are today.

We have given politicians and political parties too much importance and as a result they have run amok in the last 30 years of our democracy.

Just observe the selfimportant behaviour of any politician around you. When there is an event which they or their organisation has organised, they will be the last to arrive and probably the first to leave shortly after giving a, more often than not, lukewarm speech.

I am generalising as I know a few who do not do this, who participate in their event and stay from start to finish and thoroughly enjoy their interaction with their constituency. They may well be outliers as the majority certainly do not do this.

Ask yourselves, have we imparted any political education, not party-political propaganda, to our children and the youth we interact with on a regular basis?

Do our young people understand the party political system we have chosen?

Do they know how it works and its limitations?

When they say they will not vote or even register to vote, what is our counter to that? Do we curse them and move on or do we sit them down and educate them about the importance of participation as civil society in all matters affecting us?

Do we know enough ourselves to even do this?

Is it why we then look up to the Big Man to do all the thinking for us and just follow him to wherever he is leading us?

As citizens, we do not do enough thinking and agitation to solve the problems we have, yes problems and not this “challenges” nonsense the elite keep describing them as. We have been sucked into their illusory vocabulary which is designed to mask the smell of manure they constantly serve us.

We then fall for all these gimmicks and elevate them to a level they don’t deserve.

We must wake up before we make the same mistakes again in the general elections which are to not vote, noncritical engagement with the parties, not agitating for your needs to become a priority, apathy and voting just for the sake of it.

We have to change the way we do things.