THERE are only three kinds of people. Leaders! Those who take charge, build, inspire, and create. Followers! Those who support leaders and work to achieve mutually beneficial goals and of course destroyers!
Destroyers cannot find it within themselves to follow anyone. Their hatred and insecurity is too pure to see strength in any other being.
They utterly lack the ability to inspire or create, so they do the only thing left to them — they tear down all they come in contact with. These are not our words but those of Rick Remender, an American author.
We share and echo Mr Remender’s words because as we slip under 10 days before the presidential and general elections, we are remaining with few leaders among the presidential candidates and hundreds of genuine followers who support peace.
Sadly, we also have a handful of destroyers who have vowed to create confusion because they seem to have an idea of the outcome of the elections. Shamelessly these people have gone on camera encouraging their blind sympathisers to use violence to help them satiate their selfish perversions.
Unlike leaders, the destroyers are being guided by the notion that if they can’t win it, no one else should. May we remind these people that Zambia is bigger than their paltry self-centred lives.
Elections are not a boxing match where the strong, fast or intelligent person wins. Elections are about transparency where the electorate choose the person who speaks and understands their needs.
Winning elections is about delivering the promises that one made to the people. It is also about being mature and offering leadership that separates the chaff from the original stuff. It is about leadership that promotes integrity and building of lives and not taking them.
Leadership is the direct opposite of destroyers who are using violence as the last refuge of their incompetence.
The Zambia Police as directed by President Edgar Lungu should ensure that such selfish beings are dealt with in accordance with the laws of this land. We are not in any way influencing the men in uniform to be brutal when dealing with such issues because as long as they do that to combat violence, there will always be violence.
Police need to follow the law during their crack down on such people as they are serving no one else but the Zambian people who perceive them as protectors of the law providing a service with impartiality.
If the police act with excitement and not focus, they will just fuel more chaos as the destroyers will find a loophole to agitate them in order to confuse the situation. Our men in uniform should just be firm and see to it that the country enjoys peace and harmony during and after next week’s elections.
It is not only the police who have the responsibility in stopping this political brutality but even those who have not directly been affected by it should join in condemning the bloodshed. The threat of violence is as traumatic as actually suffering or witnessing it.
Let us denounce people encouraging an eye-for-an-eye as witnessed on some videos that have gone viral on social media. Such people are carrying bitter grudges in their hearts and they want us to join their own fights we don’t even know about.
On the other hand, let us embrace leaders who are praying even for the destroyers as we approach the election day. People who wish their enemies well wish for even bigger things for people they are leading. Refuse violence by following such leaders.
Like Martin Luther King Junior said, the ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it.
Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate.
In fact, violence merely increases hate. So it goes on. Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars.