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Pausing and recalibrating and engaging

Mar 09, 2020 Editorial

We are perched on a knife’s edge of disturbed and distressed humanity. No court ruling is going to ease that, as it wrestles against any sensible containment. As a society of varied communities, of different peoples, this rails against the scant outposts of good sense and clean thinking. There has to be the greatest determination to stand unflinchingly and unswervingly against the mobs that mass in public. Nothing good comes out of those presences.
Political lines-meaning racial lines-are drawn taut and tense like never before. All the chatter about democracy and process give way to the raw realities of community and city. All the statesmanlike and grizzled maturity required at the highest levels, and across the board, are largely conspicuous by glaring absence, by deafening silence. Now is not the time for this country to split at the seams.
It is the time, though, to stop shouting at each other futilely. Now is the time to pause and take stock, and realise that we are going about our business of governance, of neighbourly relations, and the pursuit of social stability in the worst possible way. There is the endless screaming at each other, with none hearing anything but the accumulated malice and prejudice. It is loud and bulky, a real burden on this nation. Nothing is achieved, nothing can be managed, and not a single thing worked out amidst such political passions.
It is imperative that there is pausing (at every level) through a concentrated effort at restraining the passions that stir and surge, then threaten to splash across friend and foe alike. There are too few of the former, and too many of the latter. Instead of the massed ranks of proud and passionate partisans, this country right now needs more friendly faces from within its own children, as many as it could summon to its side during these times of crisis. Too many on both sides are rearing to go for the jugular. In the manner exhibited-loudly and recklessly, there may only be the headless stumbling around here.
What good would that serve? What kind of conversation could be had then? If we are not dedicated to finding our way out of the thick darkness, out of the deep tangle, then to what fate have we resigned ourselves, condemned ourselves? It is fine and fair to expound on SoPs and what and how things should be. But we cannot do so in the middle of a Category 5 hurricane cum avalanche of disputes. And if and when we succeed in lurching past that electoral hurdle, then to what and to where?
Who is going to govern whom? Who will be allowed to, in this unapproachable, uncontrollable bushfire of a political, social, and racial environment? That is the dilemma and the unresolved (perhaps, insoluble) mystery in the sum of accumulated fears. At this demanding hour, the nation is naked, weak, and prone to every artifice and every manipulation. Our country is all of these things on the inside, while an endangering outside lurks beyond our map.
Thus, there is searching for and calling for practical leaders, leaders fully familiar with what current circumstances demand in all their harsh nuances, leaders conditioning themselves to respond to the palpable challenges of the moment. Let this first truth be faced and now: SoPs and processes to be complied with completely are means to governance ends, rulership ends. Then there is this second truth: nobody, but nobody, desires the other side of what those ends could mean, what losing brings. It is about the dominance not desired, about submission not forthcoming from any losing side. None of these postures, thinking, visions is going to seep away anytime soon. Repeat: at any time.
It is where we are prior to court decision. It had better be faced honesty and quickly, realistically, too. It is more than about the apparatus of elections processes. It is about who will be in charge of whom. There had better be readiness for everyone in the rainbow of groups to be at the seat overseeing the wealth and welfare of this grievously, if not gravely, wounded society. It is this way and no other way, for there is none.

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