“POLICE gunsights on cash smugglers,” read a headline the other day. Why “gunsights”? Why fatal shooting? Why should police be executioners? I cannot help ask many questions. Destabilising the economy by illegal financial dealings is a criminal offence. But is it a capital crime, deserving instant death, without a judge, a formal judgment, justice?
Fr Oskar Wermter SJ
A village party leader recently threatened his fellow villagers with death if they voted “wrongly” next time they cast their votes. Party leaders did not censure him. Are we back in the war? Is the law of the gun still stronger than the principles of the constitution which guarantees freedom, equality, justice (as reflected , by the way, in the “National Pledge”)?
Why should destruction, violence, murder and bloodshed bring about a better, more just and humane world? What motivates African rebels, American gun fanatics and “drive by” random killers , Arab terrorists, xenophobic liquidators, ethnic cleansers? Why death and destruction? Why this denial of life and hope?
The US American National Rifle Association is obsessed with the right of every American citizen to carry weapons in self-defence.
In fact, it makes guns easily available not only for self-defence, but also for assault and aggression. The national myth of the pioneering “Wild West” of the 19th century feeds the proliferation of privately held arms, even assault rifles.
Mentally deranged persons, of a nihilistic philosophy, driven by hatred of their fellow men, without any respect for life and human dignity, allow an atmosphere of terror and fear to spread, ironically at a time when their political masters have declared war on “international (Islamic?) terrorism”.
This glorification of the military through a history of war and violence is tragically spread by America which is the media super-power No One to the rest of the globe. One would have thought that a strong democracy is the best anti-dote to terror and intimidation, since the vote should supersede the gun, free expression of opinion and open debate making armed conflict unnecessary. What has gone wrong with American democratic liberty?
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We in Zimbabwe have no right to denounce the American gun culture and addiction to hunting, shooting and firepower heroics. Our own history is also one of violence. Our leaders, frustrated by the intransigence of our earlier opponents, opted for an armed, revolutionary struggle.
Having achieved our objective, independence and self-rule, we should have barred the bullets from further political contests. Instead, we are still stuck in the “revolution”, and abductions, political assassinations, and intimidation are still considered a political option, though the constitution rules them out.
Every day the news channels feed us our ration of violence. Every day we are shown blood-drenched corpses, suicide-bombings and sheer terror, in the Arab countries, now also in European cities and in African bush-warfare and township crime. You would think this is enough for anyone, and we would turn away from human slaughter in disgust and despair.
Far from it, once the news is over we switch to our entertainment channels: more people being blown up, shot, tortured, more gunmen (and tragically even gunwomen) peeping through “gunsights” possessed with death and destruction.
We are pressed into celebrating the past violence of our heroes and heroines, and singing their praises, thereby perpetuating our historical preoccupation with guns and the need for an ongoing armed revolution. Military glory makes armed violence acceptable.
But is that a “revolution”? What is “revolutionary” about that? Paying for blood with blood, in monotonous repetition, strikes me as reactionary rather than revolutionary.
A genuine revolution understood as fundamental transformation would be a radical option for life and infinite respect for every living person.
The weapons of war would be ruled out entirely as instruments of change: since Abel slew Cain people have destroyed each other. What war has ever made a real difference? Is war not forever the same?
The surviving fighters do not tell the whole story. For instance they do not mention the innocent blood spilled, the unnecessary suffering caused.
Have the “comrades” ever asked the women in their ranks for forgiveness for having used them as “comfort women”?
Has there been a genuine revolution in men’s behaviour towards women? Rape seems to be on the increase, domestic violence out of control, human trafficking — think of our 200 sisters in Kuwait — is now a huge business crossing international borders, beyond the control of national police forces.
Many of my brothers just do not believe that they have no right to use women for their pleasure, maintaining, as a phony excuse, that women like being raped and are quite happy in the “oldest profession” (which is just another lie).
For 36 years running around in the same old circles, is it not time for a completely new start? Making life and the protection of life, human integrity and dignity the only goal worth fighting for?
I am often moved by prayerful people who always start their cries to heaven with the words, “Father, we thank you for the gift of life…..”
My feminist sisters defend the right of women to choose whatever career and occupation they like, even soldiering.
And yet I shiver when I see women on firm screens shooting and killing.
Is this really progress that they now may also kill and destroy like men? Should they not thank the Lord on their knees that they have the enormous privilege of being life-givers by nature and nurturers and protectors of life? That their brothers should exempt them forever from being called up for military service or being operators of killing machines?
Mothers should cradle children in their arms, not guns.
We need farmers and agriculturists growing food more than producers of weapons, gun traders and merchants of death. We need police and soldiers who are genuine guardians of the peace and defenders of the weak and defenceless. In such “security forces” which would never allow themselves to be corrupted into dispensers of death by their political masters even women would find a positive role to play as protectors of children and victims of violence.
We are supposed to “have life and have it to the full”. Let that be our “revolutionary” and transforming goal in the future, if we are to have a future at all.
●Fr Oskar Wermter SJ is a social commentator
