The Sins Politicians Are Committing Today Will Haunt All Of Us Tomorrow

By Dr Masimba Mavaza

I’ve been following politics in Zimbabwe since I was a teenager. I’ve listened to countless radio talk shows, watched an imponderable number of talking heads on cable news networks, and read the political news and opinion columns of a dozen different papers. As a writer, I also publish opinion pieces regularly with several conservative media outlets and have written several books on politics and law.
So, as you can imagine, I’ve got some experience observing other people’s political sins, and maybe even more experience in committing those sins myself.

The sins we commit in the public square usually don’t seem that bad and some might not seem like sins at all. But upon reflection, they are sins that, over time, harm us and our fellow citizens in significant ways.The reason that the deadly sins are deadly is not because they are inherently evil, but rather because they are such powerful motivators that people are prone to indulge in them to excess. This may seem counterintuitive to many, but these actions change the direction of the history of our country. There are ways that we are tempted to commit those sins in our political interactions.

Some would argue that the indignation that rights a wrong on the one hand and a vendetta that destroys a community on the other are different in kind, not merely different in scale, and perhaps rightfully so. However, for our purposes, the crucial observation is that both are driven by the same feelings and emotions—in other words, they are both symptoms of the same underlying motivations. The sad fact is that the participants in a vicious and destructive vendetta feel the same sense of moral outrage felt by someone standing up to a belligerent bully.

The deadly political sins are clearly extremely powerful motivators, so much so that they are harnessed to drive nations of all sorts. Interestingly enough, many politicians seem to specialize in one or another of the deadly sins. The choice of sin is extremely important: As we will see, the choice of sin greatly influences the party’s longevity. African leaders’ long hold on power undermines good governance and promotes conflict. So this becomes the grievous sin. Leaders do not wake up one morning and say that they want to stay forever in power. There is always a group of people who will always push the head of state to remain in power. These people pretend to be doing all this in the name of the president yet they are doing it to protect their own interests.

The first sign of idiocy to be displayed by these politicians is the sin of pride. Pride is the deepest type of rebellion and the sin at the root of all other sins in politics. When we are proud, in politics sense of the word, we deify ourselves. We place ourselves at the center of the universe, making us more important than the people of Zimbabwe or our fellow citizens. In the political arena, our pride manifests itself in our well-honed ability to spot the sins of people on the other side of the aisle, contrasted with our inability or unwillingness to see our own sins or the sins of our chosen political tribe. When confronted with the wrongs or weaknesses in ourselves or our political tribe, we change the subject or shift the blame. The people who are in the lead of forcing the president to take the third term are so blinded with pride they dwell in political pride, and they lack the genuine humility, the root of all virtue. In humility, we recognize that constitution is the center of governance ; thus, instead of being navel and being obsessed with ourselves and our political tribe, we are liberated to serve our fellow citizens and work for the common good.

Zimbabwe has been cursed with some few in position of leadership who are now creating sharp divisions among people.

These people are greedy and selfish. Greed is the vice that causes us to value ourselves more than the people who elected him. When we are greedy, we try to accumulate more “stuff” for ourselves, thinking that “shiny things” such as wealth or power will help us deal with the disappointments and sadness of our broken world. In the political realm, we manifest greed when we engage in politics not for the common good but for our own enrichment. That often leads us to sin in other ways, such as cheating, lying, colluding, and becoming obnoxious bullies determined to score political points. A greedy politician is one whose goal is not to help our nation but to appear that he is helping our nation while he is really only helping himself. A greedy policy wonk is one who wants a job at a think tank, but doesn’t really care about the people her policies are supposed to help.

Greed promises happiness, but cannot deliver, because the deepest happiness comes from the truth.
It is clear that the greedy envious politicians are now attacking those who do not agree with their point. They are dividing the nation insulting the generals of freedom all because they want to be seen as the favourite of the president.

Zimbabweans celebrated the advent of the new dispensation but their joy is being curtailed by the greedy.

Envy is sorrow occasioned by another person’s happiness. Envy wishes to push the other person off the path of success or happiness. It is lethal to joy because gratitude is the root of joy, and envy refuses to be grateful. An envious society is one that allows for, and even encourages, its citizens to resent those who are more successful than they. It is a society whose members imagine themselves entitled to every success and every good thing. In politics, envy causes politicians, opinion writers, and party members to cringe at the success of others. It causes talk show hosts, opinion writers, and everyday citizens to slander and degrade decent people on the other side of the aisle, even while defending badness on our own side of the aisle.

For decades, African politics has been synonymous not always fairly with presidents overstaying their welcome. We’re all too familiar with the dictators and the strongmen (and yes, it’s always men). The constitutional coups. The third terms and the fourth terms — and the fifth and sixth and seventh. And those are just the presidents who are currently overstaying their welcome. Others had to be removed by force — or until death qualified them for the Great Presidential Palace in the Sky.

It is sad that there is a team of high ranking officials who are busy pushing the president to unconstitutionally be unconstitutional.
These people abuse their proximity to the president and behave as if they are untouchables.
These actions will come back to haunt them.
One wonders if these people had never taken time to see what happens to those who forced the curse of third terms.

The people who are in the front seat of soiling our constitution will have one place to sit and lick their wounds.

They are for now controlled by wrath. Wrath is ill-motivated and misdirected anger. This is unrighteous anger which leads to hatred. It is self-righteous and judgmental, focusing on the other person’s wrongs to the exclusion of one’s own. A society characterized by wrath is one that, for example, wages wars of vengeance without recourse to principles of justice.

Similarly, a wrathful society is one whose public discourse is pervasively uncivil, whose citizens treat one another with disdain and disrespect. A wrathful society is one whose citizens—including express uninhibited rage in their Facebook updates, Twitter conversations, website comments and email forwards. A wrathful society is one whose prime-time political pundits behave like juvenile delinquents, shouting, insulting, and interrupting one another, and whose prime-time audiences reward the pundits by continuing to watch their rude and inane shows.

Given the toxic nature of current contemporary Zimbabwean politics and public life, the political future is blurred.

Zimbabwe is actively looking for mature politicians.