The Tribune

By Dr Ian Bethell-Bennett

We are being led by a system of hypermasculine men who see it as their right to steal, plunder, rape, pillage and murder through their class privilege, lies and deceit.

They care little for the damage they inflict on the societies around them. They care only about their fiefdoms; their castles surrounded by moats that are poisoned with lies and snakes with forked tongues against the community they claim to love.

In the old days, these would be called Indian-killing colonisers, Indian-killing cowboys, or simply kind Europeans who came with paternalist good intentions to educate and evangelise the masses, but somehow ended up destroying them, as (Nigerian novelist) Chinua Achebe showed in his work. These are the hypermasculine men that we empower to destroy those around them.

According to many sources, what we have governing us is an absolute failure of leadership. There are men who sat down with their constituents and chose to simply get up from the table and ignore all the conversation they just had, all the promises they just made, all the advancement just undertaken, all because the men in positions of leadership choose to think of themselves as above and beyond everyone else.

What we have seen exemplified is a seriously flawed concept of masculinity and leadership, both of which go together. This damaged man and his inability to lead because he is leading from a position of absolute knowledge, that no one has, is an indictment on our society.

Our leadership seems to have gotten caught up in their masculine prowess and forgotten that life is a community affair. They have taken their idea of leadership as being complete Lone Ranger style hypermasculine aggression and put it into a colonial context where, as Robert Young discusses in “Postcolonialism”, they use their position of power to violently exploit those “beneath” them. They use them to do their work, take their ideas, land and lives and then turn them over to the misery of poverty.

It is interesting to listen to former gang leaders, who the politicians say are violent irresponsible young men who wish to destroy the country, talk about their working relationships with those same politicians.

They had been asked to share their knowledge, because they certainly have a great deal of knowledge and experience of a particular type of masculinity and reality that drives the country, with the politicians and to be willing to work along side them to deal with crime and violence. This agreement was quickly forgotten. This shows the travesty of postcolonial masculine arrogance without the informed understanding of how a country or a people really works. They have deceived the population they claim to serve.

In the old days, there was a difference in race and class, these days there is no difference in race, except for what Frantz Fanon (psychiatrist, philosopher) argues is the syndrome of black skin hidden under a white mask.

They have internalised the hatred taught to the colonial subject so well that they see themselves as different from the poor devils on the street. While no one is innocent in this equation, the “poor devil” on the street – as they see the people – is less condemnable because in this case the former gang leaders are trying to use their life experience and story to build a community, a country. When such deceit becomes known, the community begins a process of unravelling. The men in charge who choose to use their power and privilege in a way that disempowers the people have chosen to exploit their own people. Much like Jomo Kenyatta’s famed statement:

“When the missionaries arrived, the Africans had the land and the missionaries had the Bible. They taught us how to pray with our eyes closed. When we opened them, they had the land and we had the Bible.”

We have lost our land to those who claim to lead us. The politicians promised to represent. They promised to listen to the stories as told by the former gang leaders who are working for the betterment of the community and to use their wisdom to work to empower young people in these inner city communities who feel disenfranchised and disaffected.

Instead, they listened to their stories, took their hands and then turned their backs on the same people they claimed to wish to assist. This is what the former colonial master did. There is no longer a difference between the masculinity that kills those encountered in the new land, and the masculinity that has taken a step in the mass empowerment movement.

Corruption, greed, arrogance and class and “race” privilege pose great problems in small communities. Our communities are so small that every deed is known almost before it is complete.

The lack of accountability, the blatant disregard for law, order freedom and humanity, the making of people into what Aimé Cesaire (poet and politician) referred to as a process “thingification” of dehumanising the community into a thing, shows how utterly disassociated the leaders have become from the people they are meant to be leading.

Not only is their idea of equality and empowerment warped, but their idea of privilege and empowerment at the expense of the land, the community and those men who they seem to think of as less than themselves will ultimately mean worse for the country. They are unleashing violence on their own communities through their hypermasculine leadership style of exploit and concur.

They must surely be damaged, but their damage is destroying a good way of life.