The erstwhile South African assassin Eugene de Kock’s book, A Long Night’s Damage: Working for the Apartheid State is a chilly reading of how low human beings can go to inflict pain, inconvenience and even death unto others whom they consider opposed to their own interests.
De Kock writes nonchalantly about killing black opponents of apartheid, here this evening, more there the following morning, burning bodies of ANC leaders here, and torching their cars there – as if it was a matter of accumulating trophies.
He accounts for his killing sprees with glee and was proud of how his superiors, such as the last apartheid Minster of Law and Order Adriaan Vlok, who would arrive at the scene where they were burning human bodies, to hand them medals and decorate them for a job well done. Many people committed such ill deeds against fellow human beings for political reasons and in many instances to advance their careers.
The human mind is so dangerous that in our situation in Namibia there are citizens who were Koevoete and Rooioogbende, who caused the death of many fellow Namibians. Yet, they claim heroism today. Just like in post-apartheid South Africa.
They all chose to forget there was a time in the history of the mighty National Party that ruled South Africa when it was in their best career interest to carry a National Party membership card as a qualification for jobs as school principals, directorships in government jobs and banks, not to mention qualifying for government tenders and overall upward mobility in the state and diplomatic services.
The book The Super Afrikaners by Ivor Wilkins and Hans Strydom gives a full account of this reality and how rational beings made rational choices that to be a member of the ruling party was a badge of honour in perpetuity. They forgot that nothing stands still in history. They later changed the narratives of their own lives to suit the new circumstances.
Just like it was fashionable in pre-and during World War ll Germany to name male children Adolf, and certainly for many people to claim family relations with Adolf Hitler. Today it is almost impossible to find a German with the name Adolf, never mind Hitler. They all changed because of the way things ended. In the heydays of apartheid success, the Dutch Reformed Church was to all intents and purposes apartheid at prayer. It will be interesting to see what future generations will say of us today, and whether they will see today’s churches as the ruling party at prayer!
In his book The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852) Karl Marx hypothesised that history always repeats itself – it starts as a tragedy, then turns into a farce. He pointed out that men make their history, but not as they please, as they do not make history under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already – given and transmitted from the past.
Only a handful of political leaders, such as Nelson Mandela understood the importance of the turning wheel of history when they were at the zenith of their potentate power and influence.
Those of us who had the privilege to work on the project of nation building with Tata Mandela, or Madiba as he was affectionately known, would remember that even though he was always the leader in the room, he always accorded everyone, including the least in the eyes of some, the respect that he believed he himself deserved by virtue of being a person, not because he was famous or held a position of power.
He was a true practitioner of Ubuntu, that age-old golden rule that we ought to treat others as we wish them to treat us. This test is failed by people in power more than those without power, as it is people in power who have the potential and indeed the wherewithal to exact cruelty unto others. The mouse cannot hurt the elephant no matter the height of its anger, but the elephant can and does with one foot trample.
History instructs us that it is often the behaviour of the powerful that is remembered, not that of the victims of power. In his lifetime Mandela did things that caused people to remember him for his good deeds, even at times when he was the victim of circumstances.
On Robben Island he was known to have NO tolerance for cruelty to others, especially the younger and lesser known victims of apartheid inhumanities, such that even though he was not affected directly by the humiliation of others, he would stand up and defend them against the victimisation and often pure violence by the executioners of apartheid cruelty.
Standing up against injustice became second nature to Mandela, even at times when he was directly affected by the cruelty of the other person. In his second year as president, Mandela went through the worst personal experience as a man, a father and a world leader.
His wife Winnie committed a family offence that was so hurtful to him that he turned to a court of law to seek a final separation from her. It was a terrible time for all.
In the middle of the court proceedings when the dirt about the failure of the marriage was paraded before the world to see, and when he, as a man, was so directly humiliated, he rose in court and pleaded with the lawyers on both sides of the dispute by saying: ‘Please do not ask me questions that will compel me to say negative things about her because the country still needs her.’
This life principle is consistent with what he once said to his comrades after the cessation of the armed struggle: ‘We slaughter one another in our words and attitudes. We slaughter one another in the stereotypes and mistrust that linger in our heads, and the words of hate we speak from our lips…’
One of Nelson Mandela’s greatest legacies is that he used power and influence not to make others feel small, but caused them to feel great. His cabinet colleagues still recall with exhilaration how they used to look forward to their meetings, because even though Mandela was their boss as the primus inter pares (first among equals), he never made them feel diminished or ridiculed in front of their peers.
Karl Marx continued to opine that the tradition of a dead generation weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living. Perhaps Marx was warning us that whatever we do will either assist or haunt the next generations after us.
This is similar to the Biblical teaching that the iniquities of the fathers will be visited upon the children and the children of the children to the third and the fourth generations. It is this kind of wisdom that enlightened leaders, such as Nelson Mandela, who would always consider life from the other person’s perspective.
Indeed he never made enemies, like most leaders inevitably do. Mandela never surrounded himself with fear-preneurs, i.e. people who, day in and day out, instil fear in the leader.
If books were written about us right now to account for how we have impacted on other people’s lives, how would we come out? Would we be remembered to have made life better for those whom we worked with, or would they prefer not to remember that we were there? What is clear is that it is not titles that are remembered, but what we did to make life more meaningful for others, the least of these our brethren and sistren.
The cruelty of Afrikan leaders in post-colonial Afrika is a story with no ending. Many of our leaders are remembered more for their buffoonery and silliness than what they actually did to uplift their people. Many of our leaders spend more time building their own images while imposing immense cruelty on their people.
Consider the stories of abuse of power and how these leaders are remembered:
* One of Brazil’s autocratic leaders Humberto de Alencar Castelo Branco (1964-1967), who believed and practised the axiom: To my friends I give everything, to my enemies I give the law!
* Central African Republic’s Jean-Bedel Bokassa (1966-1979), who crowned himself the Black Napoleon with a throne and crown of gold costing a third of the national budget;
* Uganda’s third president Idi Amin Dada Oumee (1971-1979), who reformed himself into His Excellency, Field Marshall, Al Hadj Dr Idi Amin Dada, MC, DSO, CBE, Commander in Chief, Chancellor, Lord of the Beasts of the Earth and the Fishes of the Seas, Conqueror of the British Empire in Africa in General and Uganda in Particular, Life President of Uganda;
* Zaire’s (now Democratic Republic of Congo) Joseph Desiree Mobutu (1965-1997), who took his country to what he called “African authenticity” by banishing western ties and music and later transformed himself into Mobutu Sese Seko Mtoto WaMayemi, Kuku Ngbedu wa Zabanga, Marshall;
* The current leader of the Gambia (since 1994), His Excellency Sheikh Professor Alhadji Dr Yahyah Abdul-Aziz Awal Jemus Junkung Jammeh, Colonel (ret.), Naasiru Deen, Babili Mansah, Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces of the Gambia, the Supreme Custodian of the Sacred Constitution of the Gambia;
* The first Malawian president Hastings Kamuzu Banda (1964-1994) became Life President of the Republic of Malawi, Ngwazi, Mkango wamkulu waMalawi, and then came the late Webster Thom Mutharika (2004-2012), who reformed himself into Bingu waMutharika, Ngwazi, Mose walelo.
* There have been times when the most educated Afrikan President Robert Mugabe (leader of Zimbabwe since 1980) was introduced as His Excellency, the President, First Secretary of the Party, Head of State and Government, Commander in Chief of Zimbabwean Defence Forces, Patron of War Veterans, Chancellor of State Universities, Supreme Leader, First Citizen of the Nation, Honorary Black Belt and Professor of Diplomacy.
* Even our hero Kwame Nkrumah (President of Ghana 1957-1966) was a decorated Ph.D and moved on to become Osagyefo (Saviour), President for Life of the Republic of Ghana.
* Jomo Kenyatta (1964-1978) was Johnston Kamau, an unrepentant polygamist, whose Harambee projects were accompanied by untold suffering of many Kenyans who dared to disagree with him.
The list of cruelty by people in power is endless. Namibia may not have seen the worst yet.
The lesson is loud and clear, and it remains the same throughout human civilisation, namely that wherever we are in life, up or down, we need to treat others as we wish them to treat us. When we are up, we must remember those that we leave behind for we might need them when we come tumbling down.
As human beings with a limited capacity to predict the future, we never know where next we shall meet those we ill-treat. Joseph, one of the twelve sons of Jacob was so maltreated, thrown into a pit and sold by his own brothers for they could not live his truth-telling. When the wheel of history turned all the way, it was him who saved his brothers and their families.
It is often not what we start that determines how we are remembered, but how things end. In this the cardinal test is how we treat our brothers and sisters when we are not aware that tomorrow might be different. We cannot change the past, but we can certainly influence the future.
Fellow Namibian: How do you wish to be remembered – that you hurt everybody who stood in your way, or you helped others to be and to become who God designed them to be?