Nobody wants to do what is required to start, much less to get there

Jul 09, 2020 Letters

---

DEAR EDITOR,

Everybody is talking about it. Nobody wants it. Nobody wants to do what is required to start, much less to get there. That would be on the road first, and then continuing on it towards some form of national healing and reconciliation.
Last year, for seven consecutive weeks, during the throes of the no-confidence controversies and struggles, I shared almost a thousand words each week about reconciliation, while using the Rwandan experience as context. Few, if any, listened. Fewer cared. Worse still, even less gave a flying, ahem, something about what I tabled. But now more and more are rushing to the fore to wax profusely about the need for some sort of reconciliation. Since this is always close to me, I cannot help but agree. But as I do so, there is recognition that the headwinds standing in opposition are ferocious.
Listen to a smattering of the thinking, some verbalized, some silent. We won. Not a bit of it; let there be no talk of anything such. Another way to power. Backdoor. I pity these, ah, characters. Sooner or later, the insensible and those imitating infants, will have to come to grips with this unyielding reality: the winner takes all system of yore, makes for losers of all of us, including those who think they won. “Dis time nah lang time”; cliched, but so true.
Look at us at right now. What is the dominant feature of our existence? To ask and answer, it is neither expectation nor celebration, with both held in some barely controlled check. It is fear. Fear that the other man and the other group will ascend. And from that fear-in fact, its inseparable Siamese Twin-flows pure, unfiltered hate. Hate for the next side. Hate for their supporters. Hate for self and the limitations of existence to which condemned, which are the bitter fruits of surly unacceptable defeat. Who should be held responsible and made to pay? This is unpalatable and unacceptable, on every count and across all boards.
People from one group or another have been told repeatedly, and in the most unconditional and confident of terms that they have won. If they have to be reduced to the forced contentment of losing now, and all that that means, then the source of that defeat has to be dealt with in any way that removes the threat and the reality of such an obstacle, a most undesirable one. The degrees of hatred simply will not countenance any consideration of some abstract convention about the democratic way, the gracefulness of conceding, the reflexive encircling platitudes of unity and togetherness and all that bull. Not when the prize disappears. Not when bread and prospects and calculations are yanked most unceremoniously from under the feet. Not when there are only the jagged rocks beneath to serve as cushion for disappointment. Not when there is all of that fabled oil flowing. Who is going to trust the next fellow to give them their deserved portion of the pie, when one’s own people are suspected? Who is prepared to wait the eternity of five years for another shot at the crown? Who is ready to give the other people a chance to govern, when they cheated out of birthright, bed and board, and house and land? Somebody better get real in this country, and in a hurry.
In this most fevered of atmospheres and environments, most do not have time nor patience with clean process nor priority for clean governance. Does not matter. Could care less. Just declare us the winner. In this boiling cauldron, I am at a loss to understand how anyone, any group, could think that they stand a chance to rule efficiently and smoothly. Inclusive government is out, and any such messengers run the risk of being lined up against a wall in summary dismissal. Similarly, trusting the next man and the next side to do the right thing and immediately be open to reaching out to embrace the opposite people for some form of inclusion and reconciliation is off the table and out the window.
This is what is at play under the surface currently, and for the longest while now. Still, there are those who clamour about winning and ruling happily ever after, as if this is just like old times. It is not; “dis time nah lang time”. I go back to where I have always been: too much hate. Too much stubbornness. Too much selfishness. Too much lusting for power. Too much enmity and bitterness. Given what I have heard (from a distance) are the social media hate-mongers going to close up shop and go to church? Are the hardliners and extremists suddenly going to transform into doves and lambs? And just so that nobody gets any ideas, at this time in this society, everybody is a proud political hardliner and racial fundamentalist.
After all this, I hear stirrings of reconciliation through immediate reaching out past declaration and swearing in which appear to be the most insurmountable of mountains. I regret that the time for that may have passed us by. “Dis time nah lang time”.

Sincerely,
GHK Lall

---

---