A comment on the large crowds often witnessed at public
rallies and more recently pact signings, and the continued castigation of them
by a middle-class tweeting and blogging away at their businesses, in their cars
and at places of work, for being unemployed idlers being misled by a political
elite that feels nothing for them.
Is it not a genuine concern that any leader worth his salt
ought to be concerned about even while ‘pacting’ away? As they sign away to
share spoils, an eager and expectant crowd watches on – chanting their names
out loud.
Why are these many people here …. “well am popular and a
tribal chief in my own right” … but then again; it is in the middle of the
week, a Monday, a Tuesday – days that essentially ought to be the most
productive days of the week, did they seek or get the day off work?
They are there because like every other five years they hope
that the ‘pacting’ is FOR ONCE about job creation and the general welfare of
the citizenry, not about who gets the spoils after the forth coming gruesome political
battle, aren’t they?
I read a very interesting book – The Black Man’s Burden:
Africa and the Curse of the Nation-State , by Basil Davidson (I thoroughly
recommend it despite the many criticisms leveled against it). It talks about
the prevailing political situation in which citizens merely remain present as
existential phenomena …. But are absent as participating actors. He gives an
example of East Germany where after the Berlin rising, official leaflets of the
government informed “the people” that they had “forfeited the confidence of the
government” - in which case “would it not have been simpler for the government
to dissolve the people and elect another?”
If any leader is ‘pacting’ covertly or overtly at the KICC
or Jivanjee gardens, surrounded by mammoth crowds and not for once thinks (because
that is how we feel when during five years they act as though they do not give
a rat’s ass) about why all these people are not at their places of work, then
they are simply not worth either e-effort (as the tweeters and blogging middle
class has been termed) or actual rally attendance effort!
My Take_
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