The 7 Deadly Sins

These are: Gluttony (greed), envy, jealousy, pride, anger, sloth (laziness), and… how is it that the last thing is always so damn hard to remember? 80-20 rule again, I suppose. Anyway, if you’re African like me, you obviously don’t think too much about these rules, or place too much importance in them. More colonialist waffle. In fact, if you think about it, we embrace them as being good. Why else do we choose leaders that have these qualities? We see these qualities in our leaders and we see ourselves in our leaders. They are just like us. We see no harm in these qualities. We think that capitalism and the western world also embrace these qualities. These qualities define selfish, narcissistic and ultimately destructive behaviour, as opposed to humility, tolerance, patience and creative behaviour which are always for the greater good of the community and the earth itself. So what? The issue is that, for decades, civilized man had developed an “internal compass” based on certain rules to inhibit these qualities in us. Take religions, which have always been fairly dominant in civilizations, especially uneducated ones. All the religions promote the same behaviours destined to support social cohesion and community peace. This allows people to work together on a large scale, even a national scale. People subvert their selfish interests for the community interests, which ultimately is in their interests too. Over time they begin realizing this and naturally start working in the interests of the community. “Positive” humanistic behaviour is encouraged and looked up to. However, us Africans never really went through this, so we haven’t developed the internal compass. What this means is no empathy with animals or people, and no internal reasoning to not behave totally selfishly and without regard for others or the community. Of course, education helps. But most of us don’t get it. Throughout history our behaviour has only been controlled through fear, by witch doctors and ruthless chiefs. There has been no real understanding of why we should behave in community ways. We see no reason why we shouldn’t have a ruthless, greedy leader for our country, and if all our parliamentarians are fat, corrupt gluttons that’s good, because we see nothing wrong and would do exactly the same in their shoes. Our solution it seems, is legislation. But it can’t work. Ask any businessman – if you can’t trust your employees, and they don’t have the right attitude and aren’t aligned to organisational goals, you are dead in the water. You can make rules and impose security till you’re blue in the face, but things will not work out. People must guide themselves, but this requires an internal compass which encourages positive community behaviour. South Africa is a lost cause. Dead in the water. Destined to a Zuma future. An uneducated leader who has just helped me remember what the last deadly sin is. Lust. The ultimate embodiment of everything unsocial and uncivilized in a human being. So I guess our destiny is now staring us in the face, more or less assured. Another country of warring baboon troops, each led by a big, strong and ruthless dictator. Was there ever any other answer? Could an African country ever subvert the 7 deadly sins sufficiently to emerge as a united, successful and prosperous community? Let’s hope one of our neighbours can get it together and show us the way. Lets hope one day we’ll have the humility to follow their lead.