A NATION IN DECAY

This is a new year and expectantly - riding on fresh resolutions - we should all be reinvigorated and renewed to embrace a new dawn while also primed to take, head-on, new challenges yet here we are with our backs at breaking point owing to the heavy load of burdens we have carried forward from the old year, true to the French saying that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

One of the many daunting challenges that keep gnawing at my conscience whenever I try to nod off every night is the apparent moral decay of the Eswatini society. An early warning sign that the nation is drowning in a cesspool of immorality is when people become desensitised by a deluge of horror stories and events – which we have had aplenty in recent memory. I am sure if I were to ask the question of how many people are still shocked by daily press headlines of rapes and cold blooded murders, only a handful would raise their hands. Otherwise the majority are now as used to these horror stories and events as they are to their daily bread, those who can afford it.

Manifest

Of course there are many facets that manifest moral decay or immorality, beginning with the businessman or politician who amasses wealth through corruption. Depending on whom you know, associate with or relatives in high office, you are most likely to get away scot-free. Consequently the starving masses inevitably look up to such scoundrels – given to their colourful and expensive lifestyles and material possessions - as role models from whom they occasionally beg for crumbs. Yes, it is often said bad situations inevitably inspire crises of faith, and that is precisely the abyss that is now home to the have-nots masses.

As I see it, the situation has degenerated further than the worship of those who have horded their wealth through criminal and other illicit activities. A nation once referred to as the most peaceful – a statement I have issues with because I am not aware of any nation that is naturally disposed to violence as a way of life other than a means to an end – emaSwati have become violent hence we are daily inundated by a deluge of horror stories and events.

Occurence

What once could have passed as unSwati – whatever that means – is today a daily occurrence with those charged with looking after and protecting the most vulnerable having transformed into predators. An innocent baby or child is today not safe from those who naturally should be their refuge and protectors. Those in romantic relationships are no longer safe and protected in the loving embrace of those they are in love with. The guardians, who invariably include blood (maternal and paternal) relatives, have become predators who prey on their vulnerable relatives and neighbours. Simply put, we have become a nation of animals unrestrained by moral values. The question is what has gone wrong because this nation was never ever at war with itself until now.

My take is that we have been betrayed by all those traditional, customary and political institutions that we historically grew up under and looked up to, to teach and guide us between what is right and wrong. This began at family level – whose integrity, observed Confucius, was the strength of a nation - where the role models were the parents, aunts, uncles and neighbours. The next level, which was the local community leaders including teachers and church leaders (preachers, reverends, etc.) while at the top is the political leadership. It is apparent that all these societal pillars that ought to be collectively responsible for raising decent human beings and fostering high moral values have collapsed.

The church – with an exception of the few older churches that, however, have been progressively isolated and marginalized - has become home to the brazen criminal and a get-rich-quick scheme where rape, fornication, adultery and all kinds of immoral activities are its stock-in-trade while the family unit has all but disintegrated with single parenting now in vague.
Similarly, the political leadership has also been infected by the get-rich-quick-at-whatever-cost bug and quite honestly could be responsible for polluting all the other institutions in an era that is now defined by material possessions and grand lifestyles.

The casualty in all of this has been the moral value chain whose systemic and progressive erosion has negatively impacted the masses at the foot of the food chain, resulting in mass poverty and suffering. Thus the custodians of moral values within society have all but vanished and everyone left to their own vices in what is progressively transforming into the biblical Sodom and Gomorrah.

No wonder, therefore, that kleptocracy has also become a normal and accepted practice among the high and mighty as if it were official policy hence, to quote George Orwell, ‘in a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act’. With everyone else, including the leadership at home, church, at all political levels and the so-called role models all enmeshed in one immoral activity or the other, who will rescue this nation from sinking deeper into the immoral cesspool? That is the question that should be gnawing at the consciences of every responsible citizen every night before nodding off. Moral regeneration will not just happen on its own but requires leaders with integrity, a rare species in Eswatini society, to lead the charge.

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