On the psychology of oppression

Oppression as a domination and exploitation of people operates in several landscapes of life. Much like witchcraft itself oppression tends to take over the physical and psychological universe of the oppressed turning them into its subjects and objects. A monumental example of oppression as witchcraft is found in the case study of the conquest, enslavement and colonisation of African people by some European powers and their agents. Colonialism and slavery took over the physical, mental and spiritual universe of Africans and stamped its indelible signature in their very souls. The slavish and the colonial wound remains the perpetual bleeding scars from which Africans are not going to easily recover. Most Africans prefer to forgive and forget colonialism and slavery. Others prefer to forget but not forgive. Some of us think and live slavery and colonialism are crimes that are still taking place in other ways and by other means. The overall truth is that colonialism and slavery are not done with Africans and African are not about to be done with the true traumatising epical and also epochal events. It is for that reason that I believe that oppression cannot be understood and later alone successfully fought without careful pondering of its psychology and spiritual foot prints on the lifeworlds of the oppressed.

The natural and the normal

All forms of domination, exploitation and subjection are presented by the perpetrators as natural and normal realities that cannot be avoided. The colonisers and the enslavers, for instance, wanted it understood that colonialism and slavery were things of God’s will and artefacts of the natural order of things. Oppression does not present itself as the scandal and the crime against humanity that it is but it carries itself as the natural river flow of the world and life. The oppressed are demanded to believe that their suffering is not new and that it is normal and nothing can be done about it. Some thoroughly oppressed women frequently hold the scary belief that being corporally punished by their husbands and boyfriends is the true sign of real love. In exactly the same manner some enslaved and colonised African subjects came to be believe that slavery and colonialism were normal and natural gifts from the powerful and the generous white men from the West. In other words oppression becomes true when it is accepted by the oppressed as inevitable, natural and normal. Some Europeans circulated and still circulate the unfortunate myth that slavery and colonialism was the price that Africans paid for modernity and civilisation. Some clever Africans validate this myth, tragically.

Monkey see and Monkey do

There was a going joke in the University of Zimbabwe of the bumpy 1990s. The joke held that a certain men worked at the farm of a particularly evil white settler. The white settler verbally abused and physically punished the wretched man. What was done to the man apparently the men learnt to transmit it to others the way wire does electricity. The same abusive words the white settler burdened him with he used to pelt his pathetic wife at home. As the white settler did to him he physically punished his wife with booted feet and fists. The poor wife, wounded and enraged, passed on the verbal and the physical abuse to the children when the man was away to the farm of his troubles. The same abuse and violent words the men used on her she passed them on to the poor kids that went on to look for their own victim. They found the family dog an easy target and punished it verbally and physically. The dog became an angry animal that bit other dogs and savaged passing strangers on the road. The family cat became the foremost victim of a troubled and troubling dog. The cat found his own victims in weaker cats and other vulnerable small animals. In that way the anger, hate and violence of the white settler at one farm multiplied and amplified violence in one community. The source of unhappiness in society was the settler. The moral of this anecdote is that most oppressed people tend to become oppressors in their own right. It is in that way that oppression can be transmitted, circulated and turned into a societal culture when it is a crime against humanity. The psychologists call this externalised oppression that the oppressed projects and passes onto others. That angry husband that was a lion to his wife at home was actually a sheep to his white settler boss in the farm. Yes, most oppressors are victims as well, somehow. Those bullish people that walk around demanding to be feared are actually pathetic and terrified personages deep inside their wretched selves. I can say here that the white settler himself was a dehumanised and traumatised wretch that hid his pathetic reality behind anger and violence.

We have learnt it from philosophers from Paulo Freire to Frantz Fanon that some oppressed people tend not to hate but admire the oppressor and want to be like him.

They see and go on to do what the oppressor does. In the process they become oppressors in their own right. Many women have testimonies of how it is female bosses that are most cruel and even evil at work. We can observe that it is most likely husbands that are bullied by other men at work and away that tend to be particularly violent at home. In that way oppression is properly like an infectious pandemic that is circulated by human minds and hearts.

We can see from the above that oppression can be internalised and owned by the oppressed. Other oppressed people get dehumanised by the abuse that they suffer. They wallow in misery and hate themselves for their condition. They blame themselves and their reality and not the oppressor that punishes them. They lose their pride and confidence and become social wrecks that are totally empty inside. Frequently these people become depressed and suicidal. These are the people that become the living dead that walk about but have no life inside them. Having a pumping heart and a breathing body does not mean life; death itself can live in a living person and turn him or her into a living dead object.

Other oppressed people do not blame themselves or their oppressors but others in society. They turn around to be angry sociopaths that hate everything about society. They turn out to be vandals and sociopathic thieves and killers. They might be anything and everything but they remain at war with society that they seek to punish by doing everything that is anti-social. And then we have the psychopaths that take the misery inside themselves out on other people and other objects.

It is sociopaths and psychopaths that occupy the ranks of serial killers and serial rapists. That is the way oppression causes sickness in society.

The pedagogy of liberation

We have seen how very easy it becomes for the oppressed to become oppressors. The desire to revenge and compensate for their oppression turns the oppressed into dangerous oppressors in their own stead. Others admire the power and evil of their oppressors and tend to imitated them and reproduce their power and evil on some weaker targets. Being an oppressor can be attractive as it comes with power and privilege. Some weak people tend to support and crowd around oppressors for their own protection and comfort. It takes courage, intellect and character to oppose and confront oppression. Otherwise many and most people choose the easy way of seeking and finding their own comfort zones within the cycle of oppression. To enable oppression and be enabled by it is normally the easy way for cowards.

The grand vocation of liberation asks more from the oppressed than opportunism and the temptation to imitate the oppressor. Liberation if it is true liberation does not revenge oppression nor does it repeat it. Liberation creates another universe of life, a revolutionary alternative. Freire in particular made famous the observation that true revolutionaries do not only free themselves from oppression but go on to free the oppressors themselves from the prison of being oppressors. Oppression, otherwise, has its perilous psychology that allows it to be transmitted like some disease in society

Cetshwayo Zindabazezwe Mabhena writes from the Jo hannesburg Institute for Advanced Study (JIAS). Decoloniality2019@gmail.com.