I most times wish I lived in a world without politics. At least politics as I have seen and experienced them. Then again, do I even know what politics are? What the word means and what politics actually do?
My own definition – a game played by adult humans, mainly male, whose prize only they know. Low or high stakes, they play for everything.
Unfortunately, you don’t need to sign up for the games yourself to be affected by the game. You can be an active or passive player or an uncommitted, disinterested observer or passer-by. It’s not like only the players lose or win. We all get affected in good and terrible ways, but mainly the latter, because of the games politicians play. Even I, who can’t properly describe the game, gets affected! That’s what I hate the most.
Take this whole very unnecessary and frankly annoying debacle involving a politician that in normal circumstances you’d forget even existed. I feel like even calling him a politician is debasing the term and what a politician is, much as I hate it. A person who before all of this excelled at violence, hooliganism, and currying his masters’ favor through uncouth means.
As fate would have it, this Emmanuel Jay Jay Banda finds himself as a people’s representative, sitting in the august house of the National Assembly presiding over the creation of laws for this country. That’s the least of my concerns for now.
My annoyance began in May 2024 when the media space was awash with some bizarre disappearance of this individual. A flurry of stage-playing from several of his political masters later, he turns up as bizarrely as he had disappeared. We’ve never rested since.
The latest happenings in this game have particularly rubbed me wrong because why is a person who was clearly aided and abetted to flee from the law by active political players being given all the shielding and support to not be returned to face his demons after he is found? And they taunt and belittle those whose duty, it is to bring him back! “Ubufi! He hasn’t been arrested! He’s not in any country’s custody! Prove that you / they captured him!”
How do they confidently know all this if they had no hand in this man’s shenanigans? Shouldn’t they be supporting him to do “right” defend himself and prove his “persecutors” wrong?
I don’t understand the things of diplomacy but I sure hope that whatever is going on, my country emerges out of this stronger, wiser, and right. I don’t know definitively what right is but I’d like to see some vindication.
My money—read tax—continues to be used as part of the resources being expended to get this guy so I have every right to be interested, despite my desire not to. If they asked me, I’d want my money to save a child battling cancer. Not someone as least deserving as that man. But it’s politics, remember? I game I get to play in without signing up!
