adminDavid Mungoshi Shelling the Nuts
This week I choose to veer off the beaten path and look at things topical, things that we often gloss over or take for granted.
This week we participate in the prevailing political discourse of our time. Everybody cares about something or someone and is capable of ascending into bottomless depths of passion in this regard (the oxymoron is intended!)
The twin evils of fanaticism and fundamentalism belong to this realm.
Caring is not necessarily a bad thing; we must indeed all take more than just passing interest in our surroundings and our material circumstances.
Wouldn’t it be nice to think that everyone was on the same page for a change?
That is the stuff on which the dreams of statesmen are built: a national vision. But in Zimbabwe in 2018, with 90 political parties in the fray, that looks increasingly more difficult to attain. The cynic will, of course, say with tongue in cheek as usual, that we are blessed with the ability to compete against each other, no matter what and by whatever means possible.
In some cases, the competition is more perfunctory than honest and useful. In other words, some of us just go through the motions. Some people do whatever they do just to score a point. Nothing else! Afterwards like Little Jack Horner they lick their fingers and say, “What a good boy am I!”
Get me right folks, it is everybody’s right to be a spectacle or make a nuisance of themselves if they so wish.
So, far be it from me to impose my own scheme of things. Our constitution is a competent document and I would not presume to critique it, but I doubt that it entrenches or makes provision for such wild pastimes as wanting to throw a spanner in the works just to see how things settle.
If I had my way I would borrow the American concept of attractive nuisance and draft legislation to stop wasteful behaviour which is a form of attractive nuisance in that it can lure a nation into situations harmful to itself. Lest I begin to sound obscure, let me attempt an explanation of the doctrine of attractive nuisance.
Attractive nuisance is a doctrine connected to tort law as envisaged and applied in the United States.
Readers may well ask what is meant by “tort law”.
The answer to that is that a tort is a law that makes provision for the righting of civil wrong, such as in cases where a person is made to suffer loss or harm by another person.
The action by such a person is then called “a tortuous act,” or an act that can result in legal liability with the accused person being made to appear before a court of law.
In other words an aggrieved person can seek satisfaction in court whenever they feel that a civil wrong has been committed against them.
Anyone one who has raised children or been close to children knows that the proverb, “Curiosity killed the cat” is generally apt for describing children’s propensities for inflicting harm on themselves.
Children will often want to find out things for themselves and this is not always without consequences.
When a toddler is attracted to a glowing fire or flame and wants to take “this toy” to play with, mothers at some point allow the child to touch the fire.
The child soon cries in confused pain and after that no matter what anybody may do to try and get the child to repeat his folly there is no way that that can ever happen again. In proverbial terms we then say, “A burnt child dreads fire.”
In such a scenario the fire is an instance of attractive nuisance simply by being there for the child to experiment with.
Children dislike prohibition and will always want to know, either why they cannot do as they please or what would happen if they did anyway. Signs like “Do not walk on the grass” or “Keep the windows open” usually make a child walk on the grass and shut the windows.
I once went to a party where a harangued mother was driven almost to breaking point by the incessant questions of her little boy who kept asking the most inquisitive questions: Mom, what would happen if the chair had no legs?
What would happen if the roof fell in? Mom, what would happen if I had no mouth? The questions were rapid and numerous, only stopping when the mother snapped harshly at the child. If I could have followed up on this I would not have been surprised to see the little boy trying to close his mouth with tape or something or even try to remove the legs of a chair and so on and so forth. Just as the popular folk story about the scorpion declaring that it is in its nature to sting, we can boldly declare that it is in the nature of a child to want to find out about things and to know no bounds.
If we go back to the attractive nuisance doctrine, we find it argued that a landowner may be held liable for injuries to children trespassing on his land if injuries are caused by objects on the land that are likely to attract children.
The doctrine, therefore, seeks to protect children and the need to protect children emanates from the realisation that children are unable to appreciate the risk posed by the objects on the land of the landowner. According to Wikipedia, “the doctrine has been applied to hold landowners liable for injuries caused by abandoned cars, piles of lumber or sand, trampolines, and swimming pools.” Equally, the doctrine applies to practically everything on the property of the landowner.
Zimbabwe is our land and we are, in a manner of speaking, its landlords. We are also the children of Zimbabwe, sons and daughters of the soil all of us, unless of course we opt out for whatever reason. In that respect it is our bounden duty that we should at all times and in all places protect ourselves against possible harm. In our case, the attractive nuisance objects include all the spoilers currently in the political arena. These are individuals or organisations with no clear-cut programmes, individuals and/or organisations that make attractive noises to distract the general public from making informed analyses of the situation and of what is offered or not offered. We harm ourselves in some way when we pay attention to these fly-past people who, like whiffs of ethereal smoke, rise and dissipate into nothing. Voters must separate the wheat from the chaff and thereby guarantee that we are not held to ransom by schemers and demagogues who are likely to become despots.
Whoever falls in the 2018 elections must not smear hard-working, honest to goodness presiding officers and polling officers with unjustified allegations. It is an insult to patriotic Zimbabweans to suggest that competent and professional servants of the state can do anything other than what is expected of them in terms of what the law says.
Anyone who has ever been a presiding officer in the country’s elections knows that they are liable to prosecution if they tamper with the process. The presiding officer at a polling station is under constant scrutiny from candidates and polling agents. The polling agents guard the box at all times, day and night and watch all proceedings with acute care. Strict protocols govern when the presiding officer is to open or seal a box before all present. Polling officers are similarly guided by the laid-down rules on how to administer the voting process. Any deviation from what is prescribed is punishable at law. To date no presiding officer or polling officer has ever been dragged to court by anyone. This means that political parties must accept complicity in their defeat. It no longer suffices to accuse innocent functionaries of chicanery. Parties should fill the honey to the top with their ideology and their programmes and other kinds of carrots that they might care to dangle.
While there is no need to re-invent the wheel and while there are many models to copy, it is important to make the right choices, choices that easily resonate with the voting public.
Zimbabwean parties must stop behaving like the bully who threatens the village beauty with dire consequences unless she accepts his advances. A South African crooner by the name “Boston Tar Baby” did a song called “Zala abantu ziy’ebantwini” (Girls turn down some suitors and get attached to others). In other words, you win some and lose some. Ideally, we all must make the coming elections a festivity of competing ideas, and thereafter congratulate those of us who are first past the post. That way, Zimbabwe stays open for business twenty-four-seven and goes forward as one.
David Mungoshi is a writer, social commentator and editor.
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