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Things fall apart as EDIOTS hero-worship

12 Jan 2019 at 00:31hrs | Views
Not to see faults in our leaders is injustice to the person concerned also, Hero worship. It has probably always been a thing and is also not likely to die out any time soon. Picking someone to excessively admire to the point where they can do no wrong, seems to be second nature to humans since we can't always seem to help it. Sometimes, it just happens.

There are definitely pros and cons to hero worship, especially extreme hero worship. Anything can be rather unhealthy in extreme quantities and hero worship is no exception to the rule.

Everyone has heroes; someone that they can look up to or someone similar to what they aspire to be. There's nothing bad about having heroes. In fact, it's rather helpful in getting through life when you do have heroes. It just becomes a problem when having that hero consumes everything in your life and that person gets put up onto a pedestal that they didn't even ask for. Hero worship can completely consume and possibly destroy someone's life if they aren't careful.

When someone is consumed by hero worshiping, it can completely alter that person's life. They can become blind to any faults that their hero might have and can lack individuality because they're trying so hard to be like their hero.

It is possible to have a hero and not worship them like they're a god. Sometimes we have heroes because they have a quality that we ourselves desire to have. And that's okay. There is absolutely nothing wrong with having a hero. Almost everyone has heroes. But it's not necessary to worship the ground they walk on. That should be reserved for dogs, who actually deserve it.

Zimbabwe is in a situation where people have forgotten the ideologies policies and aims. They have now put their minds and mighty on people. We now suffer dangers pertained to the dangers in eschewing constitutional methods which is characterized as "the grammar of anarchy". A second drew a distinction between political democracy on the one hand and social democracy on the other. With the Constitution, every adult Zimbabwean would have the vote, thus ensuring political equality. And yet on the social plane, we have in Zimbabwe a society based on the principle of graded inequality which means elevation for some and degradation for others. On the economic plane, we have a society in which there are some who have immense wealth as against many who live in abject poverty." If this disjunction between political rights and social disprivilege persisted, "those who suffer from inequality will blow up the structure of political democracy which this system has so laboriously built up."

It is imperative that all Zimbabweans must not blindly and uncritically follow a particular leader. John Stuart Mill, had said that the citizens of a democracy must never "lay their liberties at the feet of even a great man, or ...trust him with powers which enable him to subvert their institutions".

I would say that "there is nothing wrong in being grateful to great men who have rendered life-long services to the country. But there are limits to gratefulness. As has been well said by the Irish patriot Daniel O'Connell, no man can be grateful at the cost of his honour, no women can be grateful at the cost of her chastity and no nation can be grateful at the cost of its liberty". This caution is far more necessary in the case of Zimbabwe than in the case of any other country. For in In Zimbabwe what may be called the path of devotion or hero-worship, plays a part in its politics unequalled in magnitude by the part it plays in the politics of any other country in the world. But in politics, hero-worship is a sure road to degradation and to eventual dictatorship."

Now, in the immediate aftermath of Independence, we saw the enormous prestige that men like Joshua Nkomo and Robert Mugabe commanded. They and their Parties have participated in an arduous and extended struggle for freedom. The years they had spent in jail demanded attention, and respect we could see all this, and we should be worried about the consequences. Just because Nkomo and Mugabe had rendered ‘lifelong services to the country', does it mean that their actions or ideas were immune from critical scrutiny? Was their record of patriotism enough reason for the ordinary citizen to follow them implicitly and unquestioningly?

As it happens, most political parties are not unaware of the dangers of blind adoration so they vested more power in the Congress than in the leaders. In ZANU PF There is a growing "intolerance of others and a certain contempt for the weak and inefficient". It must be noted that this conceit is already formidable", and there is no worry that soon Leaders might fancy themselves as Caesars of some sorts.

Leaders' Caesarist tendencies must be kept in check by the party's own self-awareness; and by the fact that they are living in an age of political giants. Within the party and the country people treat leaders with affection, not deference. Some parties meanwhile, have leaders of considerable self-respect and ability but have fallen in the problem of making their leader a Ceaser and an un questionable  people. They have come up with a mantra that this leader only. Chetete rhetoric should be thrown away and must not be entertained.

The conduct of Most party members is a paradigm case of the dangers of Hero worship in politics. It led "to degradation and to eventual dictatorship", as manifest in the assaulting of political opponents.

There are people who worship the leaders with a blasphemous zeal. If you question anything there are some people who start asking questions like " so are you saying the leader is lying. This questioning is a leaking attitude and hero worshiping which is pathetic and totally disdainful.

Some leaders have become first personality cult in independent Zimbabwe Regrettably, they are not the last. In the since, several leaders have been the subject of total adoration on the part of their supporters. At various times and in different Chamisa and Biti have been elevated to a sort of superhuman status so was ED.

The people have sought to promote the worship of Leaders naming numbers of schemes after them and encouraging slogans which mortified them.

ZANU PF was never meant to be controlled or dominated by a single individual. It prided itself on its collective leadership. In the years when it rose to prominence and then to power POLITBURO has always been the power but things have changed. Some leaders have been elevated above the rest, but only marginally they are first among equals.

The dangers are now hatching political parties and nations are now increasingly subordinated to the will of a single individuals. first, the saviour of his party, and then, the Saviour of the Nation itself then untouchables. The other leaders have obediently laid down their liberties — and their critical faculties — at the feet of this one man. So have the party cadres. And now they ask that the rest of us follow they attack any opposition with venom and competing with one another to be to on the leader's  side.    Even more aggressive are the band of cyber-hooligans who seek to express their hero worshiping not so much in praising their Hero as in abusing in the most vulgar language those who do not subscribe to the Myth of the Great Messiah.

If only we forget individual heroes and unite. The country will be great and surely prosper.  Heroism is the sure way to self destruction and political disaster. With this mentality Zimbabwe will never have a challenge strong enough to institute a great changes.

Wrong things are never corrected because what the leader says is taken as correct. The country can descend into chaos and nobody rebukes the leaders. We are under thousand blankets of hero worshiping.  

Surely hero worshiping is so dangerous to both the heros and the worshipers.

Vazet2000@yahoo.co.uk

Source - Dr Masimba Mavaza
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