LAST week we observed that Gran had left her husband over an altercation betraying the two’s emotional unsuitability.
We questioned her decision to abandon a lifetime conjugal partner to pursue a new life of unbridled individual freedom: freedom to cook and eat alone, to love and flirt with a boyfriend against social conventions and to unashamedly defend her naked immorality against her husband and against her own daughter.
In short, she demands total freedom from society and its scruples.Her vision is typical of the Western false dream. It is a warped social vision guided by the philosophy of individualism.
This is what the French philosopher, Jacques Rousseau, advocates when he says “Man is born free, but is everywhere in chains.”
In fact through the Gran and the way she socialises Ellie you can see the white world’s preoccupation with ‘individual rights’ and ‘individual freedom’.
Ellie’s morality is shaped through practical baptism in the bars, picnic sites and demonstrated sexual anarchy at home.
She is also encouraged to latch onto some scandal by way of practice and sooner than later she catches on.Typical of mhembwe rudzi inozvara kamwana kane chizhumu.
For instance, when she fails to take her cheating lover-boy Jason, Gran asks her to choose anyone never-mind her feelings towards him all in order to fulfil the school party expectation of romantic company. Eventually Ellie is persuaded to invite Vance, a once-off beer-party acquaintance to soothe her injured feelings and they flirt for just that one evening. Later when she is in London she moves in to live with another man, out of wedlock (kwatinoti kuchaya mapoto).
She does not consult anyone, not even her parents. She follows her instinct as taught.
When she falls out with Mark (after discovering that they are temperamentally and romantically worlds apart) she walks out on him.
And her decision is backed by Gran who counsels as usual: “follow your instinct.”
This is the attitudinal legacy she wishes to bequeath to her grand-daughter Ellie through both sermon and deed.
Sociologists call this ‘social reproduction’.
Laymen call it leading by example. As Africans we have no kind words for this myopic moral vision.
We call it leading by the tail, the wrong anatomy for that matter.
You need to be disabused of this inverse gravitation away from the human world to this immoral jungle by reminding you of the dangers of the philosophical cul-de-sac of individualism, and of deserting society as master-moulder, master-teacher, care-giver and protector.First of all, you want to be disabused of the philosophical bankruptcy of Rousseau’s false intellectualisation.
It is a finding of fact that man is not born free. The truth is that the mother’s womb is the first boundary. Within it the foetus is still dependent on the mother for everything. This womb is mumvuri wezvichauya.
Upon birth, the baby is connected to the mother through the umbilical cord which when cut is subsequently deposited into the earth again to mark the new arrival’s organic connection with the new womb, the earth. It also signifies the new arrival’s responsibility to guard and protect his land. Also remember that on arrival the new being does not alight on to a desolate destination.
There are people waiting for the new arrival’s disembarkation. These people are your community. They have been waiting for you for longer than even the nine months you stayed in your mother’s womb which only, but a necessary lay-bye. Yes, there were necessary lessons amounting to both physical and spiritual orientation.
If you arrived earlier before the full course you would miss out on critical preconditions for your future tasks.
You would arrive ill-equipped for the job ahead.
Yes, the waiting community out there were not waiting in vain; but to receive you and give you terms of reference in your new life.
Wazvionaka. There is no worse lie than saying man is born free.
Society is your midwife at birth and throughout your life.
Okot p Bitek sums up this Africa-centred philosophical positionality when he says:
“Man is not born free.
“He cannot be free.
“He is incapable of being free. “For only by being in chains can he be and remain ‘human’. “Man has a bundle of duties which are expected from him by society, as well as a bundle of rights and privileges that the society owes him. “In African belief, even death does not free him.
“If he had been an important member of society while he lived, his ghost continues to be revered and fed: and he, in turn, is expected to guide and protect the living.”
Three points need reiteration here: first, that chains by which we mean social obligations make us human (to be human is to be society-compliant). Second, that successful execution of social duties and responsibilities is a precondition for the reciprocal process, that of receiving rights and privileges. Third, that death does not absolve one’s obligations to the living, being just another form of existence. This is the notion of unhu/ubuntu which is the cardinal moral compass for Africans.
Africans understand their world not just as “a geographical expression; (but) also (as) a metaphysical landscape . . .(and as) a view of the world and of the whole cosmos perceived from a particular position.” (Chinua Achebe).The imperative significance of the other, of community and society as a whole, is what is glaringly missing in the novel where individualism is guided by a false philosophy. Take heed vana vangu. When you choose self ahead of society’s age-old and tested wisdom, you have no one to blame when evil befalls you. Gran walks out of her community in search of individual freedom.
She stays alone at her flat. As a slow learner she fails to heed her gregarious instincts which are partially served by Ellie’s sporadic presence, choosing the wrong company of Miles who ironically fails to take her all the miles to her end.
When Jason joins her at her new suburb, a new lease of life dictated by a sense of community assails her again as a reminder to go back to her community. But when he leaves, she turns down Miles’offer of staying together which would be a better evil. She vows to suppress the communal spirit, opting to go it alone. The result of following her instincts is her death. She is murdered by a burglar. And can the police be more accurate to observe: “suburbs are a bad area.
“She had no security fence, no wall, no alarm and insubstantial locks.”
In a nutshell, she dies because she has no society.
Society is the firewall, the security fence, the alarm and the lock.
You can only defy society at your own peril.
Beware soul brother, beware.