In any society, organisation or family, if you don’t understand the cultures and customs, you will struggle to understand the basis of the relationships. Equally so, if you do not consciously change existing toxic cultures you tend to reproduce the same toxic relationships even if the leadership or staff change. Environment conditions the atmosphere and ambiance in any organisation.
Continue reading “CULTURE, CHANGE & TOXICITY”
FATHERHOOD is the most culturally, socially, politically, and spiritually abused and weaponised concept, status and power in the world, but especially in Africa.
It doesn’t matter where you turn everywhere and everyone wants to impose FATHERHOOD or FATHERSHIP on the world around them. Father – Tata – Papa- Baba often used as a term of endearment, honour and respect is now a weapon of oppression, abuse and primitive extraction of personal benefits and power. I call this process or concept FATHERISATION (Fatherism), ‘Paparization’, Babarization or Tatarization of faith, politics, business and society !
But before we discuss the negative consequences of Babarisation, Paparisation or Tatarisation (Fatherism), what is FATHERHOOD? Here is my take :-
HAPPY Belated Father’s day to all my Comrades & brothers across Africa. Fatherhood is lifelong opportunities to put others’ needs before your own, care for another’s physical, spiritual, financial, intellectual & emotional well-being, and practice true unconditional love.
FATHERHOOD creates a deliberate balance between material, emotional, intellectual, ethical, physical& spiritual nourishment that in-turn creates a space, place, freedom & support for children to grow in their interests, choices, values, ideas, faith & character.
FATHERHOOD is Responsible Stewardship & Service to your children. It means service by helping your kids nurture their nature. Ensuring that your actions are helping & not hindering them. Fatherhood – being in service and influencing children- requires skills & patience. You learn fatherhood through observation, studying and doing. Don’t observe the wrong things or read the wrong templates because you will end up practicing the wrong things. If you already are practicing destructive fatherhood, course correct fast! The consequences will haunt you for life. If you hurt or super spoil your kids now, you will have a lifetime of regret and consequences to deal with!.
FATHERHOOD is about setting an example through your own actions, words & thoughts of responsible, compassionate, respectful & productive malehood to your sons & daughters. First as a role model. Hopefully a reliable & trustworthy friend to them when they’re older. You need to maintain balance. Even God says “those whom I Love , I discipline”. Discipline without love is aimless punishment and love without discipline is concealed hatred !
FATHERHOOD is a free – and often forfeited – lifelong graduate Masterclass to learn skills and develop attributes through lessons that are not offered anywhere else in the world. You learn from your children (biological, adopted or co-opted) even as you nurture, guard, guide and inspire them!
FATHERHOOD is LEGACY Building and Preservation. Each of our families is made up of centuries of LEGACY built into a complex tapestry. FATHERHOOD is also, therefore, about living up to that legacy (good or bad). It may also be about creating a NEW LEGACY and broadening parameters of imagination, experience, vision & achievement. It should be about breaking old bad or negative cycles in families, including inter-generational poverty often passed on from one generation to the next.
FATHERHOOD is the bold practice of LOVE. It requires the older to become a student of the younger whom they are nurturing and mentoring. Fatherhood is the ultimate challenge, risk, fear, meaning& the ultimate pleasure in life of any man. Be patient and focused. Your child is your responsibility no matter how much you loathe, despise or regret ever meeting the co-parent. You cannot hate a part of you and be stupid enough to blame this on the Co-parent .
The circumstances under which your seed became a human don’t matter nor do they diminish your responsibility and accountability one bit. Fatherhood is not a moral position, it is an irrefutable responsibility for, to, through and over your children
FATHERHOOD is not the Liberal or indisciplined donation of Sperm (consciously or subconsciously) and then being forced to maintain the consequences of your donation or you running away from the responsibility over your seed. MEN; let us be accountable, responsible before & after & not just selfish.
FATHERHOOD is a key relationship cog to building healthy societies. Its pervasive dysfunction explains why we struggle to fix government, development, and our value systems. You cannot fail to take care of children you sired and then want to defend the interests of “CITIZENS” as a businessman, artist, activist, academic, faith leader, Traditional leader, politicia etc. Who are the “CITIZENS” if not folks raised well or badly by their parents? Folks abandoned, rejected, abused or truly loved and mentored by their fathers? We are trying to fix in the nation what we are destroying each day in every home through irresponsible FATHERHOOD, Fatherism, Paparisation, Babarisation or Tatarization of society. Malehood without an ounce of responsibility or even accountability.
Brothers, Comrades, Friends : Charity begins at home. Let us change our ways !
FANTASY LIVES
No one can silence you from dreaming or sharing your dreams. You have a democratic right to fantasize about any aspect of life. In fact, many people live more out of their fantasies and memories than present day reality. If you’re so unfortunate to be their friend, sibling, workmate or neighbour, you will be drowned in make-believe lifestyles or stories.
Fantasizing helps some people to deal with reality or simply to dull pain, loss, fear, inadequacy and confusion. They make up love
Betrayal, success, greatness, friendship and happiness stories. These people can magnify or amplify a small thing, fleeting experiences, casual encounters with famous or rich people or events into Hollywood, Bollywood & Nollywood blockbuster combined in one with all the requisite stunts, sound effects, emotional expressions and backgrounds!
Sometimes people make up missing people in their lives i.e fathers, mothers, siblings, uncles, aunties, lovers etc) or create past realities that never ever happened e.g. trips, holidays, gifts, fights etc!
Others auto edit their past to remove poverty, dysfunction, abuse, rejection and even some unpalatable relatives and moments! Other people change their ethnic, racial and other such attribute.
Look your history is perfect in its imperfections. You don’t need a perfect past to be the perfect you. This stuff is real folks! People that fantasize a lot often become conmen, public figures, creatives or simply fantastic writers. A majority become avid politicians or activists for some cause! There is a very thin line between serial liars and serial fantasies!
Serial Fantasies are often a sign of delusions of grandeur, great creativity or a narcissistic disorder. Fantasy Manics are likely to be extremely sensitive, vindictive, needy, moody or downright abusive.
Let me sum it up for you :-
(a) They don’t really care about you, your thoughts, feels and personal vision. You have the same worth to them as a selfie , pendant, piece of jewellery, perfume or antic artifact! You are held very close because you fit the frame of their fantasies. You either have the right family background, educational qualifications, artistic talent, looks, social media profile or you pay them homage regularly. You are showered with attention and gifts in order to keep you enslaved, to enslave you or in order not to allow you to worship at any other altar.
(b) Fantasy Manics are the centre of their own universe and they worship themselves and expect everyone else to love, adore or worship them! Don’t you dare bow to their nonsensical delusions, because if you do, you will be manipulated from here to Gujarat, Timbuktu, Hawaii or Honolulu!
Call this abnormality out. Please don’t normalise the abnormal! Start with yourself though. Move yourself from information and image peddling to practical personal transformation and growth .
INFORMATION vs. PRACTICAL LIVED EXPERIENCE
Turn book, Internet and TV information into locally relevant and practically applied knowledge!
I have met plenty people that can eloquently describe how to make money, build wealth or even influence. They can talk about the law, politics, health , education, technology, spirituality, music, arts and culture, leadership, service, environmental consciousness, recycling, integrity, parenting, marriage and etcetera. After I have been impressed by the eloquent articulation, I have always asked how many times , in how many places and for how long have they have done what they have just talked about.
What have been the five major results for other people and for yourself? Where can I get evidence of this great set of achievements from at least five different people ? At that stage the eloquent often start describing sermons, meetings and workshops or just start to stammer!
Friends, it is possible to write books about leadership based on other people’s stories and experiences. You can talk about great miracles, blessings and wonders referencing other people’s experiences and achievements. You can take anecdotes about leadership, saving, investment from Rich Dad /Poor Dad , John C. Maxwell , Covey,etc cram and regurgitate them eloquently. BUT doing and saying are two different things and I dare say experiences. In other words , WHAT IS YOUR OWN STORY?
INSTANT SUCCESS
You can start something and be an overnight success. You can make a song and it becomes a global hit. You can start a movement and it captures public attention like a wild fire. You can say the right things and even become a struggle icon or poster child. You can make one investment decision and strike it rich. BUT instant success without a sustainability formula can destroy you more than repeated earlier failures.
NO ONE CAN TEACH YOU SUCCESS!
The greatest teachers on any subject are not the insanely eloquent, flashy or even celebrated. It’s men and women who have tasted failure several times and made costly mistakes that they have owned up to. No one can teach how to succeed really, BUT there are people out there that can teach you how to handle the very cold winter of failure, rejection, loss and eroded self-confidence.
So, I always ask great leaders two questions:
(a) Have you ever failed in life, if so, how, when & why ?
(b) What lessons did you learn from your failures and how did you rebound from it?
We celebrate a boxer for their triumph in a 15-round bout of boxing and forget how many months and hours of preparatory pain it takes. We celebrate a Sprinter that breaks a world record in under 10 seconds and totally forget that the few seconds victory took months to prepare for. In preparation, what you do everyday matters as much as what you eat, say and think. Feed yourself the right stuff, say and do stuff aligned to your dreams!
PLEASE ABEG, DO !
My friend, you most probably know too much about many very important things but you are either broke , broken or are about to break!
Do, don’t make up ideal pasts, create an ideal future. The things or people you didn’t have growing up created opportunities for imagining a future not based on past deficits but optimums.
-Don’t make up friends, lovers and great connections: deliberately build them. People don’t really care whether you’re great or not, but folks will respect your hustle, your talent, passion and authenticity!
-Fantasies can be turned into something awesome and rewarding if you invest time and skill. Stop describing the ideal , do it , try it and be vulnerable enough to accept that you may fail spectacularly! What is there to lose given your current true status? Not social media status – real state of your finances, relationships and self-confidence!
-If your level of knowledge and quality of life are miles apart, it doesn’t make any sense at all. Truth is, you don’t have bad luck at all. No one bewitched you! You are like someone that buys a fully-kitted gas heater or stove and freezes because of the cold or starves to death because they have the manuals but somehow are afraid to ignite the heater or stove. You have all the resources and even the need to turn your wonderful theories into practice. BUT you are not focused or disciplined enough to take the journey from FANTASIES to practical ACTION! You are not sure, you fear taking baby steps because you fear falling? Falling is part of learning to WALK by yourself. SO, please STOP this your THEORISING and DO! Fail whilst doing ! Who knows, you might just succeed!
Let me repeat what the late Pastor Zivanai D. Manyika (one of my great mentors & friend – ZD) taught me. I was a young lawyer with many accolades and more blind spots. I was very sure of many things and knew a lot less than I thought.
We have countries, communities, families, individuals, churches, mosques and NGOs that live way beyond their means. All of us owe emotional, nutritional, spiritual, cultural, professional, physical, intellectual, relational, familial and financial debts. Every dimension of life demands of us a price, certain risks and sacrifices. It demands that we give or give away somethings in order to receive other things or factors of greater value.
You see, many things that parents and mentors say to you only make sense much later in life. One thing I did though, was that I listened to all my mentors attentively. Each of them was like seasoning of a different type. Some were honey, others chilli 🌶 , others garlic or ginger. Mentors help to chisel characters.
ZD would hold his head in hands and say in a deeply reflective manner: “Baba, in Life, if there is any price, risk or sacrifice for anything – pay it upfront….. no matter how costly or painful it may seem. Delay or procrastination costs much more”. It only made partial sense then as ZD spoke. When I was on my own, a stream of contradictory thoughts would race through my head. Sometimes I would ask myself kuti ‘surely, if you cannot afford something that you want immediately, you simply buy it on hire purchase’.
Why choose the hard path when there are plenty easier options? I always thought. The country (Zimbabwe) was prosperous then and many young professionals lived LaVida on borrowed (hire purchases) clothes, cars, household furniture,etc. ZD insisted and I listened to his difficult, challenging & indigestible wisdom & instructions: Pay Upfront, Pay Now or Pay Soon!
As a result, I avoided unnecessary debt and when I look back, I also avoided unnecessary future pain, suffering & loss by paying for many things upfront ( be it career, studying, working hard, reading, friendships,etc). I still do!
Here are the reasons why:
1. Some of your present pain, your condition, your losses, your struggles etc is as a result of costs that you deferred payment or refused to pay when it would have been less painful to do so! It is about personal growth needs & imperatives that you tried to avoid, evade or ignore! Your pain is the outcome of both CHOICES that you made and those that you deferred or outsourced (to lovers, friends, parents, relatives, workmates or Comrades) .
2. Some of your stories of survival, your relationship Wahala/Nyayas/matata/shida (trouble) and the mess that you blame other people for are truly things you have repeatedly refused to risk, sacrifice or simply change. You want everyone, everything and even God to change to your own selfish, childish, delusional and unsustainable image of life. All legitimate victory comes after battle or competitition, preparation and some significant measure of pain, loss, discomfort, inconvenience. My brother, my sister, my friend, Comrade – pay the cost now! Risk and sacrifice now!
3. You substituted playing/fun for studying in high school or university and you think that you are cursed or have bad luck? No, you have a bad attitude, poor sense of priorities, are undisciplined, lazy or you just feel too sorry for yourself! You may even be delusional or simply carry a silly sense of entitlement! Lose it quickly, I mean -that toxic silliness!
4. THINK : about the seemingly menial job you were unwilling to do, the extra school work or degree you thought you could always do in the future, the business that you did not have the discipline and focus to sustainably build ; the course on language, coding or whatever that you despised or deferred? Ultimately, You will pay with the poor quality of life and diminishing opportunities.
Unfortunately, no amount of Prayer or lucky charms, no Blesser, Prophet, Marabou nor Sangoma can make you to totally avoid carrying your own cross.
Pay Now!
There are people who never had the opportunities for education, self-development, career advancement, and beneficial self-employment because they were too poor to afford these or were discriminated against by the system and so on and so forth – BUT You, your Case is different! You decided or failed to decide!
5. If you don’t read, learn and act now when you have the time, strength & opportunities – you will be forced by life to do so when neither time, strength nor opportunity are available. It is called sacrifice of Foolishness! Please Pay Now !
6. If you do not practice depriving yourself certain conveniences, comforts and privileges, you will unnecessarily suffer later on in life. It is as true for drink/food/diet choices and disease outcomes, as it is for hardwork and professional development. Practice pain and suffering (walk, run, jog, go to the gym, learn a new language, learn to drive, to fly, to swim, to sing, to play an instrument well, learn to cook, to code, to build, to make something with your hands, to write, to analyse….whatever). PayNow!
Avoid paying the prices of life with exorbitant interest rates in the future!
7. If you get away with lying about people, things and places and people believe your nonsensical lies (play-acting or pretense); change quickly when there is still time. There are places where your lying will not work for you, where playing naive or victim will have absolutely no currency at all. There are places and times where and when your lack of integrity and accountability will cost you everything! STOP talking BIG or pretending that you’re at levels that you are not at or that you are an expert on stuff that you know very little about . PUT substance to your posturing: study, read and enskill your passio!
8. If you’re the lazy type that gets siblings, parents, friends, workmates and strangers to do all the work – so that you can steal their work, efforts or credit: Change! Start working, thinking and doing. If all you have ever had to do until now was to turn on your charm volume & taps, there are places where charm and PR are not enough. Places where people want something meaningful and substantive beyond a feel good moment or a truckload of clichés and platitudes. There are places where your laziness or hollowness will take centre-stage and a big spotlight will be shone on it. No amount of English or French or good accent will suffice. These are places where your cleverness and smart posturing will make you look like the platinum standard of world foolishness!Please pay now!
9. Life is not waiting for you to grow up, to become more responsible, to mature beyond acquisition of things, positions and titles.
10. Peoples’ lives, time and everything else is moving on ! So, if you were the village( township or suburb) beauty or diva …move on !
11. If you were the high-school (or University) hero or genius, reference point of excellence and achievement, pathfinder, pacesetter, first this or that -move on ! If you were the most sought after, wanted, intelligent, handsome, powerful or sexy – Move on!
12. Grow up: set and achieve new milestones and everyday/year/decade successe, build new memories, create new value, push yourself to become the best version of your self as of today and not yesterday!
13. PIn Your Life: if there is any PRICE, COMMITMENT, SACRIFICE or RISK that requires doing or paying : PAY UPFRONT!
Deferred cost, living Life on hire purchase means that you will pay a lot more. Sometimes you may even have to pay such deferred costs with your Life, your health, your job and your relationships. Don’t be foolish – pay upfront for your needs, desires, ambition and vision.
The mission facing African youth is not one of participating or disrupting the Status Quo. No, it is one of conducting a modern ‘War-less’ and ‘Blood-less’ Revolution against the bloodsucking Elites ruining & running Africa!
A FLOOD OF CRISES BEYOND COVID-19
Beyond the scourge or scare of COVID-19, many African countries, communities, organizations, and families face innumerable crises, including the following:
– Crisis of families
-Crisis of leadership
-Crisis of citizenship
-Impasse of perception & crisis of vision
-Crisis of ethics and accountability
-Crisis of governance and politics
-Economic structural Crisis
-Ecological/Environmental Crisis
Some of the gravest manifestations of these crises are:
– Abuse of women, girls & children, and general sexual and gender-based violence. You should call this for what it really is, a Crisis of Masculinity and its toxicity. A man unable to discipline their bodies, fragile egos, unruly appetites, and the multipolarity of modern society
– Abuse of office, grand corruption, and impunity. Leaders that destroy society, institutions, constitutions, values, vision, economies, and social cohesion. We are a Leaderless society in ethical, service, and performance terms. We have millions dying because of casual sexual encounters and casual and temporary relationships with power merchants and masquerades during elections.
– Abuse of the vote and of voters by citizens that use petty short-term considerations to choose or recycle nonperforming, brutal, murderous, and thieving politicians only to spend 5 more years protesting against the predictable incompetence. In truth, we – for the most part – exchange long-term transformation and prosperity for a T-shirt, beer, or a few coins. Our transactional approach to elections can only produce wheeler-dealers and not transformative leaders
– If Vision is a redemptive and clear picture of what we need to become or can become, then we don’t have the shared transformative, let alone a redemptive one. It is one thing to make outlandish promises to voters and quite another to deliver on stuff that transforms society, nations, and continents. Negative framing of electoral messaging as ending this or that has no capacity to translate into the creation of such and such! Even more worrying is the fact that we expect to do the transformation in an ideological, ethical, values, human capacities, and skills vacuums. Please ask your leaders after they make fantastic electoral promises to show you their Team that will deliver on the promises?
– It is almost given that the number one job of most of our public servants and leaders in Africa is Corruption or grand theft. They will loot COVID-19 and any other disaster funds or money meant for infrastructure, social development, healthcare, and employment creation. For what? To buy cars, booze, impress lovers, and spend on self – That is splendid decadence and gross shallowness!
– Most of our political parties are not really organizations. They are hollow shells run like gangs or a game of Snakes and Ladders by casting dice 🎲. These have Constitutions and structures, but no meaningful skills. Check across the whole continent. How many political parties have research or policy departments? How many have leadership schools? How many have innovation or policy units? So, how do these hollow shells run competent governments? By charm or charisma of their leaders?
– Africa faces an economic structural crisis that manufactures poverty, inequality, and environmental degradation on an industrial scale. Soil fertility is being depleted, farmlands parcelled out to foreign investors like confetti at a wedding. There will be nothing left for future generations. Every natural resource is known is being exchanged for bribes or pittances without any meaningful job creation, industrialization, or thought for economic diversification. The incongruencies between our economic, social, and environmental policies should frighten you as must the short-termism. Our leaders are making long-term choices based on the duration of their term of office or the expected number of years before death
OPPORTUNITIES
Each of the crises I have described is also massive opportunities to shap, fight for, and create Another Africa, A different Africa! Another Africa is both Possible, desirable, and Imperative. You cannot create a New African reality using exhausted ideas of the future and Past. Nor is another Africa possible anchored on the current leadership, institutions, and policies. The Imperative of a New Africa calls for new names, new organizations, new approaches, new innovations, solid values, and bankable skills.
Africa’s great asset is its people, not the Big 5 or Mineral Resources. The fact that we allow the rest of the world to reduce our beauty and value to only naturally occurring phenomenon such as gold, platinum, tanzanite, oil, Game, Waterfalls, Mountains, Lakes and Oceans aptly demonstrates that we are unwitting participants in the reduction of African bodies and minds into uninteresting & unproductive forms. Some even joke that the African brain has great potential because it is yet to be fully used. This is crass self-hate or racism. Africa should be and has always been the Land of great inventions, ideas, and progress. To become this again we must not just pivot, we must transform or do a revolution!
When we were growing up Sexual and gender-based violence was often inappropriately referred to as “domestic affairs” by police authorities. Our society sanitized domestic violence and sexual predatory conduct as “normal male conduct”. Until the Women’s Movement taught us that the personal is political and the private is public. This is an invaluable insight because our society often ‘privatizes’ abusive behavior that we ought to appreciate as both political and public.
Irresponsible and Unaccountable Masculinity
Each time a teacher or male relative or neighbor ‘raped’ an under-age girl, the rapist was treated like royalty and a quick marriage or payment of damages to the girl’s parents done. These pedophiles never stopped and no one ever held them to account. Their victims were ignored, silenced, or shamed by the community. This idea that the male species has unfettered immunity and impunity to behave badly at home and away explains the larger problem with impunity in our society.
Male children were raised and socialized into unlimited privilege and absolutely no responsibility and certainly no or limited accountability. What do you expect? These same children became husbands, fathers, chiefs, CEOs, managers, preachers, traditional healers, teachers, doctors, lawyers, councilors, MPs, and even Presidents. Their authority and status did not ever have to be linked to responsibility and/or accountability. Some continued their pedophilia, sexual predation, abuse, and unaccountable behavior. When reports are made to the police, they pay their way out of responsibility and accountability.
We – the men- wield authority, power, and privilege almost as an entitlement, an exclusive possession. We are not – for the most part- familiar with the idea of mutuality in leadership or the notion of co-leadership, let alone co-created solutions. This idea of exclusivity that is not reciprocal permeates every aspect of male life. We -the men- tell lies, are unfaithful, do not account for anyone, but we demand truth, faithfulness, accountability, and exclusivity from our female lovers and/or spouses. Of course, there are women who are unsurpassable at this cheating game (legends).
As men, we live and behave as though it is entirely up to us to choose whether or not to be responsible and accountable in the enjoyment of our multiple privileges and immeasurable private and public power. We can sire children, contribute nothing to their upbringing, and pitch up during a girl’s Lobola (bride price) ceremony to unashamedly play the father. It is one thing to be irresponsible and unaccountable, but quite another to be shameless. I am told that Tswana culture has a remedy for this stupid behavior.
Men can philanderers, abandon their spouses and children only to return terminally ill expecting to be nursed as of right. The Male status, socialisation, and bastardization of culture allow us as men to constantly reap where we never sowed and to sow where we never water or nurture. And society has an entire bank of excuses for our bad behavior! We never care to reflect on the harm and hurt we cause because responsibility is not our thing!
Fix men in order to fix AFRICA
Starting at the family level, we have established a system of assignment of privilege that is both corrupt and corrupting. If you want to fix Africa, end impunity, abuse, corruption, violence, and abuse ….. fix the Men & boys!
Don’t look beyond the home and family to understand our national and continental governance challenges. Fatherhood (or Manhood, Maleness, etc), power, and privilege without responsibility or accountability is the source of Africa’s problem. We can transform Africa based on minimal contribution for maximum returns, power without accountability, and responsibility. The African crises are male and we must fix Malevolent Masculinity. Start with responsibility and accountability!
STOP MAKING SILLY EXCUSES!
When you come to national or political leadership, how many times have you heard these moronic statements:
1. The President is surrounded by deadwood! Who fetched the deadwood and from where?
2. Politics is a dirty game, he is doing what it takes to survive
3. Power is like a tige, once you ride it never alight or else you become food
4. Let’s give him a chance, he needs time to clean up the old system that he was part of ? And how did he remain clean in a dirty system and even get promoted?
5. The leader is a good man, but his children and that wife of his ? Excuse me fruit does not fall too far away from the tree. Like children, like father.
We all must stop being silly and stop making excuses for ruling rascals! Any leader that chooses to surround himself with deadwood and corrupt sycophants is their high priest. He is the High Priest of Corruption and deadness of thought ! Remember that our choices are one of the best indicators of who we are and what we value most . There you have it ! If your leader is surrounded by hoodlums, thieves and thugs …that is who and what he is !
briantamukakagoro.com 