Corruption begins at home

Thandekile Moyo
MY friend’s mother is addicted to drugs. She left her when she was a baby and thus my friend was raised by her paternal grandmother. Her mother went on to have more children who she managed to raise and they are all grown up now. One of these children is in his teens but last attended school years ago. He spends his time dealing and doing drugs with his mother. My friend recently came to me and told me she didn’t know what to do because her sister’s child was living with her mother (the drug addict) and she was afraid the child was in danger.

Her fear was the little girl would be raped by either her brother or one of the many “druggies” that visit the house. She also raised concerns over the child not having anyone to cook for her and look after her like a child deserves to be cared for. She said her aunt was willing to take in the child but they were afraid to upset her mother who might be offended by the suggestion. She also revealed that her brother’s (the school dropout) paternal grandmother had been trying to take in the child for years but their mother was refusing to let her go.

“Report your mother to the police”, I advised her. “Your mother needs to be forced to get treatment for her drug addiction. Your brother needs to go and live with his grandmother, get the same treatment your mother needs and go back to school. Your niece needs to be moved to a safe and healthy environment. The cycle must be broken!”

She looked at me in horror and exclaimed her shock that I could even suggest something like that. I then asked her how she thinks her life would have penned out had she been raised by her mother and she said she couldn’t even imagine how terrible it probably would be. I asked her to look at her siblings, who are all struggling in one way or another; one did not have a birth certificate until her early twenties; another did not finish her O-levels; her brother dropped out of school at Grade 5 and now this niece of hers was in all kinds of danger.

I asked her to recognise the pattern. “There is a clear cycle here”, I pointed out to her, “and somebody has to break it. Something destroyed your mother’s life, her decisions after that have destroyed all your lives in one form or another and now your children’s lives are open to the same ‘curse’! Three generations of disaster and your worry is you do not want to offend your mother?”

“It is not easy Thande”, she said to me with tears in her eyes.

I do not know how many times I have seen lives being destroyed because people felt that the decisions they took to fix things were not easy. We would rather blame our problems on generational curses, spiritual husbands, witchcraft and bad luck than make “difficult” choices.

The word inertia, is defined as the tendency to do nothing or to remain unchanged. Newton’s first law of motion, also known as the law of inertia, states that an object at rest stays at rest and an object in motion stays in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced force.

What this means in simple English is that for something to happen or for change to occur, one must act. A certain amount of force has to be exerted on those aspects of our lives that require movement/change. If things were easy, if life was easy, we would do nothing and things would change on their own. Problems would solve themselves. Food would put itself on the table and those we love would automatically love us back. Unfortunately, that is just wishful thinking.

It is easier to ignore that your brother is a habitual thief than to report him to the police. It is easier until you have to live with the regret of not helping him earlier when he’s sentenced to decades in prison for armed robbery. It is less complicated to turn a blind eye to your sister getting pregnant every time she gets a new boyfriend than to confront her about her choices and “help” her to change her ways. It is less complicated until you have to watch her struggle to raise those children and you can no longer help her because you lost your job. It is more “respectful” to keep pretending that your mother has a chronic cough than to sit her down and convince her to get tested for HIV. It is more respectable until she starts soiling herself because her untreated HIV has turned into full blown Aids.

I say this knowing I also have been guilty of sweeping issues under the carpet for the sake of “peace”. I dislike confrontations by nature and cringe at the thought of kangaroo courts. But life has taught me that to prevent troubles from becoming bigger than they already are, I sometimes have to act against my nature.

We watch our kids suffer because we are afraid they will be angry if we meddle. We bite our tongues in silence and watch our loved ones being infected with HIV by their cheating spouses. We do all these things out of “love”, we claim. What love? Love for who — our reputations or them? Love for what exactly — a false sense of peace or them?

I am of the idea that love should push us out of our comfort zones for the sake of those we love and also for the sake of humanity. Is my friend loving her mother by letting her indulge in drugs to the point of destroying so many young lives? Let us say yes, that is love. Is that kind of love worth it? Is her love for her mother worth her niece’s virginity if her brother goes on to rape her? Is it worth the number of years her brother might have to spend in prison if he is convicted of the crime? Is it worth the heartbreak her sister will have to endure if something happens to her daughter? Is it worth having her mother reported to the police by neighbours for child neglect?

We all want to be “popular”. It feels good to be known as the “nice” one. It is uncomfortable for the whole family, board or cabinet to hate you because you “did the right thing”. Everything that is wrong in our lives is a result of us or someone else taking the easy way out. We are a society of people pleasers and we crucify all those that expose our rot.

This tendency of enabling each other to be our worst selves extends all the way to our professional institutions. We watch our co-workers loot our companies to the ground. CEO’s are afraid to fire people who commit clear crimes but are quick to fire anyone who they feel is a threat to their job or unethical tendencies. Ministers turn blind eyes to each other’s corruption.

Since corruption is unethical conduct by those in authority or turning a blind eye to unethical behaviour for personal gain then I am ashamed to say, in my country, everyone is corrupt, one way or another. The next time you feel your blood boiling because “our leaders are corrupt and running the country” come bato the ground ask yourself this question: what unethical behaviour am I exhibiting or hiding so that I look good to the ones I love.

What is the cost of your love, in terms of damage to others by your loved ones? They say charity begins at home, unfortunately, so does corruption!