EDITORIAL COMMENT: Acting on the sorrows of young Bouazizi

28 Jun, 2015 - 00:06 0 Views

The Sunday Mail

In early 2012, President Mugabe sounded a warning. This warning was sounded within the context of youths and the chaos that was tearing apart Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Cote d’Ivoire.

The narrative in the private media at the time was that the uprisings were kick-started by young Africans yearning for Western-style liberal democracy.

In reality, the youths were tired of puppet politicians who continued to sell their birthright to foreigners, leaders who were more interested in feathering their own nests than in investing in the future. It was within this context that President Mugabe said: “This is the worst period we have ever been and we need a recovery from this, we need another revolution that will revolutionise the leaders themselves…

“Youngsters who get educated and see that oh no, the parents are still living the primitive lives of the past, will not stand for it … You must be prepared, you just must be prepared, even as small as you are, to stand for your principles and say do or die, here I stand. That is what revolutions bid us to be.”

Young people are the ones who cause revolutions. They are the ones who have everything to lose. It was young people who took up arms to fight colonialism; it should be young people who stand up boldly today, using the weapons of intellect, innovation and ideas to fight neo-colonialism.

Yesterday, President Mugabe met youths at Zanu-PF’s headquarters in Harare. His message, like his principles, has not changed. Did the youths hear him? Did they understand him? Did they appreciate the gravity of the responsibility that is on their shoulders?

And by the same token, do the older generations grasp the warning on the dangers ahead should they continue down the path of self-serving politics that alienate the youth and mortgage the country’s future for 30 pieces of silver.

The danger is real.

It can be likened to something called the “Werther effect”.

The Werther effect derives its name from a novel by 18th century German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe titled “The Sorrows of Young Werther”. The book is a series of letters from Werther to his friend Wilhelm.

The gist of the letters is his unrequited love for a woman who gets married to someone else.

Knowing that he will never win this woman, young Werther decides that one of them must die. And knowing that he can never kill his love or hurt her by killing the man she loves, he kills himself.

Researchers say the book triggered the first documented cases of “copycat suicides”, dubbed the Werther effect, as young men committed suicide after failing to contend with the demons that afflict young and inexperienced hearts.

The political equivalent of the Werther effect stemmed from the December 2010 self-immolation of a 26-year-old Tunisian vendor called Mohamed Bouazizi.

This young man’s sorrows as a young, unemployed African drove him to burn himself.

And Tunisia exploded, with the West hijacking this young man’s sorrows to further their own ends in that part of the world.

In nearby Algeria, Mohsen Bouterfif, a 37-year-old father of two torched himself when a mayor refused to meet him and others regarding employment and housing issues on January 13, 2011. One newspaper said the mayor dared Bouterfif to self-immolate like Bouazizi did.

Another Algerian man, Maamir Lotfi (36), self-immolated after a governor showed insensitivity to his sorrows, as did 29-year-old Abdelhafid Boudechicha.

This “Bouazizi effect” was also recorded in Egypt.

Are Africa’s, and Zimbabwe’s, leaders paying attention to the sorrows of these young men and women? Or do we allow foreigners to appropriate our issues and create opportunities to undermine our empowerment and economic liberation? Did our leaders notice how the sorrows of young Bouazizi were lionised by the European Parliament’s Sakharov Prize, how the UK Times newspaper named him “Person of the Year 2011, how the mayor of Paris named a square in the French capital the “Place Mohamed Bouazizi”?

Zimbabwe need not wait for an explosion to start addressing the matters that are close to the hearts of our young people.

They need opportunities to innovate, they need jobs, they need houses, they need to grow and contribute to the kind of Zimbabwe that heroes like President Mugabe have fought for.

That business of politicians using youths as some sort of personal shock troopers must end. That business of youths presenting themselves as willing tools in the advancement of narrow agendas that have nothing to do with the national interest must end.

By not listening to and acting on the sorrows of the young, our politicians are self-immolating, and burning our country along with their careers.

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