The ManicaPost
Chigumbu Warikandwa Post Correspondent
We keep a German shepherd at home. Spike is quite an intelligent and polite dog. He is very inquisitive and playful with every new person it meets. He is also very alert and energetic.
The dog weighs a forceful 30kgs. Its healthy and well kempt looks frightens the wits out of many our visitors. The dog understudies this reception it gets from our visitors and often times uses it to its advantage. Once it realizes that the visitor is a little afraid of it, it ups its aggression towards him.
In its inquisitiveness it tries to strike a conversation with him, barking and jumping towards him in quite a menacing manner. It also has a habit of standing on twos while attempting to embrace the visitor with its fore legs, spoiling his clothes with its dirty paws in the process.
The more the visitor tries to restrain him or run away, Spike reciprocates that with upping his aggression tactics. If the visitor shows that he is terrified by the dog’s antics, the more he enjoys his pranks.
What most of my visitors do not know is that Spike is quite a timid boy that can be cowed down by a stick weighing ten grams. Once Spike sees that one is armed with a stick, he caves in and dons his politest self.
I arm every close visitor I entertain with a single leaf of maize from my maize crop within my property. Once Spike sees the leaf he knows that it’s a weapon against his pranks and he behaves accordingly. Spike’s good behaviour is bought using fear as the currency of exchange. All my visitors who know this leaf therapy always call me inquiring on the healthy polite dog!
Just like dogs, children have to be put on leash. A child who grows without the leash of fear of the stick
meanders boundlessly into forbidden seams of the social realm. The element of force in an essential societal tool which has to be used to coerce delinquents into desired order.
Every country has a police force. Even the Vatican has such a police force commanded by the Holy See. God allowed the existence of hell to coerce those with a high propensity to sin to repent and follow His statutes.
Leaving children living a life devoid of coercion is a sufficient recipe for disaster. In strict Islamic communities where Sharia law is practiced to the book, levels of crime and social delinquency is at a bare minimum not because the citizens are very keen on righteousness but because they are afraid of the consequences of the lengthy arm of the law.
Recently the High Court of Zimbabwe pronounced as unlawful the canning of children in the home and at schools. The ruling has raised a lot of dust from the community with parents crying foul that allowing such a law would spoil our societal fabric.
Consensus on the subject seem to converge on the notion that laws have to be formulated on majority consensus. Only in 2013, Zimbabwe voted into law a new constitution that had been crafted on majority consensus.
The removal of force from parenting can be equated to removing the police and prison system from arms of government. Force or a threat to force is an essential element of assuring order and law.
While it is true that the judiciary system must take a keen interest on the rights of the child, throwing out corporal punishment will be giving the children a blank cheque with which they can draw rights from the bill of rights with the full knowledge of winning all there is. Every right must be backed by some responsibility. There is nothing like an absolute right.
Absolute access to anything valuable destroys the value of that thing. The element of scarcity is a reality of value. Anything that is not scarce has no value. Limitless access to freedom of action for children is similar to giving government to children.
The judiciary must interest itself with mechanisms designed to stop the abuse of children in the name of disciplining them. Putting a law that erases corporal punishment from society is no guarantee after all to the end of abuse of children.
Murders today are committed wantonly despite that there is a law that forbids murder. That law is paired with painful consequences on those who commit murder but murder is still committed daily. Believers of Christianity still commit sin despite having the confidence and belief in the presence of hell. But if the truth be told, if there was no hell at all or if God was going to come down on earth and announce that he has abolished and destroyed hell, all churches will be left empty, sin will surge to unprecedented levels and the world will be a den of chaos.
God is not worshipped because people love to worship him much. Instead he is worshipped by many with the expectation that God will spare them hell when its time.
The element of fear is an important factor of governance. Governance begins in the home. Parents are the smallest unit of government. Removing the use of force from government is rendering it weak and ineffectual.
The judiciary must interest itself in coordinating the forms of corporal punishment. It must prescribe means, forms, tools and the personnel responsible for administering corporal punishment outside the home.
In a home with domestic service, let parents decide who must administer corporal punishment.
In the same manner, in a school set up, systems must be put forward on which official is responsible for meting out corporal punishment under what circumstances and with what tools.
Caning sticks can be tailor made to suit pupils of different ages and gender. Effects like material, weight and other physical properties can also be gazetted to protect the interest of the child. A canning stick can as well be fixed to some immovable surface in order to limit the locus of its sway before it strikes its target.
The control of children using force has been there in our culture well before the arrival of Christianity. Christianity, a religion that started across seas from Africa came loaded with the same modus operandi of raising children.
Jesus, the author of Christianity had to mete out corporal punishment to worshippers (adults!) who had turned a temple into a market. Other religions and atheists converge at the practice of managing children through force or the threat of force.
Corporal punishment must never be viewed as violence. If it mutates to violence in practice then it has to be stopped. A child that grows without the fear of disciplinary force from the parent will one day live to see the force and violence of the state. The state has no mercy when one treads into its sensitivities.
