Chuckling to myself, the Guru, all the while surprised that you take my response to you several weeks ago as confirmation of your characterization of our two Parties as “cults.” Cult, come to think of it, is only a bad word for those who do the calling. Otherwise, it can mean fascination with, or devotion to, a person, group, or movement. We all, including myself, have shown varying degrees of public devotion to, or engaged in some praise-singing of our political organizations or party standard bearers — call the latter hero worshiping, all you want! Roll the old tapes, and you’ll see what I mean! I drew the Trump parallel to take the sting out of the idea that “cult” is an African thing. Yet you seem to minimize my Trump example as just a 10-year development in the US.
Man is a Leadership Species – There Should be No One-Size-Fits-All Leadership Standard
Oswald Hanciles: Abass Collier (former deputy minister in one of the governments of President Tejan Kabbah) @+232-30-245-169 in SLPP OLDIES 1991-2005 Whatsapp, I hope you would not be “chuckling to…” to yourself as regards what I perceive as existential threat problems of political organization in our poverty-stricken Sierra Leone – labelling our two major political parties, SLPP and APC, as “cults”.
I did not mischievously “take (your) response to (me) several weeks ago as confirmation of (my) characterization of our two parties as “cults”; I merely used what you put into the global public domain that is Social Media. (Some Sierra Leoneans appear to think that because a social media forum has membership where everyone knows the other person intimately, their conversations can be limited to a small number. Surely, you have read some incendiary postings emanating from political party forums, which they could not have meant to go beyond that small group? Social Media is global).
Abass Collier wrote that “Cult, come to think of it, is only a bad word for those who do the calling. Otherwise, it can mean fascination with, or devotion to, a person, group, or movement”.
I can’t disagree for now to your definition of what is a “cult”. Quite often, words can be nuanced; words can have dramatically different meanings based on the environment, country or city, or level of society in which words are used. The use of the words “f*×¥k you” can be just ordinary banter in some societies in the US; but, in the same US, other societies would see use of that word as an insult that shows one’s low upbringing. Just like the word “nigger” can be jocular use of the word among blacks, but can trigger violent reaction in a different circumstance, depending on whether a black man uses the “N” word to another black man, or, a white man uses the N word to a black man. During our war years of 1991-2002, the word “rebel” could trigger mob justice against a person so tagged; but, among the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) combatants, being called a rebel was a badge of honor.
I agree with you that “we all, including myself, have shown varying degrees of public devotion to, or engaged in some praise-singing of, our political organizations or party standard bearers – call the latter hero worshipping all you want!”
As I have often written, the human species is a leadership species – just as about 200 other species like lions, elephants, bees, etc. are also leadership species. We have to have leaders among us for us to better survive. Our leadership in human societies can evolve from chiefs, with little powers in egalitarian village societies in mostly tropical rainforests regions, to divine-kings, as in ancient Egypt; democratic leaders, as in ancient Greece; divine-right-of-kings, as in Europe for hundreds of years between 900 AD to even the 16th century; to God-like Mao Zedong’s Communist China or Kim in North Korea… There is really no fixed standard as to how a society should govern itself based on its leadership. What suits a group of people are what are their collective aspirations, what opportunities they seek, and what internal or external threats they have to encounter. A group in a country being threatened with genocide by a competing group in the same country is likely to favor a military leader. A society should not necessarily blindly imitate a leadership standard that has worked in some distant country. The question should be whether cult political parties or democratic political parties have worked for Sierra Leone?
Let me use my trite words: Sierra Leone is an epitome of disgraceful paradox – resource-rich country yoked with some of the poorest people on earth. Our country has also been pathetically weak – as was evidenced during our civil war years, as a former corporal, Foday Sankoh, invaded Sierra Leone in 1991 with support from the rebel leader Charles Taylor of Liberia, who didn’t even have control of a quarter of Liberian territory under his control, and no seaport; yet, Foday Sankoh’s ragtag combatants were able to catalyze a coup in 1992, and embarked on a successful scorch earth tactic of murder and rape and mayhem to eventually twice take over the capital city – with several foreign mercenaries, foreign troops, not being able to keep him at bay, until he was legally sanctioned as “equivalent to Vice President” in the Lome Peace Agreement, having more economic powers as Chairman of the Strategic Minerals Commission than President Tejan Kabbah.
Precedence; and current realities, raise doubts about the efficacy of our cult political systems. I posed that teaser as a philosophical writer to goad us to think. Let the dialogue continue.
My goal: to nudge both the SLPP and APC into evolving into being potent political parties that would better grapple with present threats and opportunities, and better provide leadership for the looming threats of the ramifications of man-made Climate Change.
I pause,
in Freetown, Sierra Leone
The SLPP is NOT a Cult Organization!!
I will tell you that the issue of CULTISM has never been part of the SLPP. When we started in 1991/92, a dream came through that we should say one Our Father and Ona Al-Fateh before starting any meeting to which Abass Collier was a part.
I will categorically say the SLPP is not a Cult organisation.
I pause,
Oswald Hanciles, The Guru