The Sunday News
Saul Gwakuba Ndlovu
Civil wars have occurred in several, if not many countries as a result of election results disputes. In some cases, coups have been staged by losing political parties and the constitutionally winning organisations have been outlawed and its leaders imprisoned or forced into exile.
The world recently watched in dismay as the United States experienced violent demonstrations by supporters of the outgoing President Trump who refused to accept that he lost the recent elections.
In the Central African Republic (CAR) the situation is alarming in spite of the presence of United Nations security forces. Millions of its people have been forced by armed bandits to leave the country and seek refuge in neighbouring states following disputed election results.
In Myanmar (formerly Burma), the army recently seized power and locked up the legitimate leaders of the country.
The matter is currently being looked at by various international organisations, and the army has been told to return to the barracks and to free the constitutionally elected leaders of that nation.
Disputing elections results is quite common, especially in Africa where some political parties have taken their disputes to their respective countries’ highest courts of law. Some disputes are certainly defensible, but others are baseless; they reflect an unfortunate mental condition of those who would rather cause civil wars than accept an electoral defeat.
In 1879, a German psychologist, R. von Krafit-Ebing, gave the name paranoia to what he described as systematised delusions, a type of insanity called paranoia that has since Kraft-Ebing’s time been analysed by students of modern psychiatry and placed in four categories. In the very first place, paranoia is an abnormal tendency to suspect and mistrust others; it is a mental disorder characterised especially by persecution and self–importance delusions.
Many political, religious, cultural and social (educational, religious) leaders are paranoid, so are some ordinary private individuals. The four categories of paranoia are: the amatory, the persecutory, the litigious and the ambitious.
The amatory paranoid is idealistic and very chivalrous in their love lives. Some amatory paranoids actually believe that they are wives or husbands of some very prominent socialite or millionaire.
It has been found to be an incurable delusion as it is a form of insanity in those who show signs and symptoms of this type of behaviour.
Amatory paranoids can cause most unnecessary tension in otherwise decently married couples. If they themselves are married, their behaviour can be very embarrassing to their marital partners as they may have illicit love jaunts with those they believe to be their other lovers. An amatory paranoid is a cause of indescribable embarrassment to her or his children. A divorce is usually unavoidable in a marriage involving an amatory paranoid.
Persecutory paranoids can be identified usually from a relatively early age. They are withdrawn, introverted, somewhat studious although not necessarily brilliant. They show signs of abnormal behaviour by being gloomy, irritable and rather pre-occupied, and complain of being misunderstood virtually by everybody.
Such paranoids may strongly believe that public discussions on current matters of interest and value are either about or against them, even friends’ conversations. It is common that such paranoids do have frequent hallucinations of being great personalities but for the public that allegedly blocks their process towards their goals.
Persecutory paranoids may at some stage hear sounds, even words, it may be on the basis of such auditory hallucinations that the patient may begin to accuse some individual or individuals of persecuting them. In primitive societies where belief in witchcraft still exists, the persecutory paranoid finds it easy to identify a witch or a wizard whose voice she or he “hears.”
This is a form of insanity against which there is hardly a cure. A religious leader with such a malady may mislead a congregation that angels are talking to him or her. There have been cases where religious paranoids who suffer from auditory hallucinations have led congregations to commit suicide en masse. A very good example of such a religious leader was Alice Lenshina of Zambia who in 1964 led her ignorant followers against the country’s security forces.
Many of her unfortunately credulous followers were shot dead.
The litigious paranoids are fond of suing whomever they think has breached their civil right or rights. Most, repeat the word “most” litigious paranoids can appreciate only their opinions and no other. They generally tend to carry on their cases from the lowest courts to the highest irrespective of costs.
Litigious paranoids, after exhausting their resources, turn around and accuse magistrates or judges of corruption; and they will say that even their own lawyers were “bought” by those they were suing. They become persecutory paranoids by blaming everyone except themselves for the unfortunate situation in which they may be.
We now look briefly at ambitious paranoia, a form of insanity whose major characteristics are delusions of grandeur.
Many aspiring political people fall under this category.
In quite a few cases, psychiatrists have come across patients who claim to be related to powerful national leaders, including royal families. Some of them said they were actually entitled to be chiefs or dukes, kings or princes or princesses.
We are here not talking about people who merely tried to dress like those they deeply admired, or to whose social class they wish to belong; that in sociology is generally referred to as “protective social docility,” the aspiration to belong to social classes higher than one’s own.
We are referring, however, to mentally sick persons who deny their natural parents and other next of kin, and claim falsely a relationship with individuals in socially, politically, economically or culturally much higher positions. Cases of people claiming to have been changed in the cradle have been recorded.
Similarly, there are innumerable cases of people whose life passion is to be national political leaders. Such individuals will use whatever they can to support themselves. Ambitious political paranoids can be a danger to a nation where most of the people are still liable to tribalistic or racialistic sentiments, where the majority of the voters are not culturally transformed.
It is possible that when Shonas talk about what they call mhengera mumba (those who are mad indoors) they would be referring to paranoids. Paranoia of whichever category is a form of insanity, and it is much better not to give aspiring leaders with paranoia symptoms an opportunity to get into sensitive national positions. Leadership mental stability is necessary particularly for nuclear powers lest they plunge the world into irreversible holocausts.
Saul Gwakuba Ndlovu is a retired, Bulawayo-based journalist. He can be contacted on cell 0734 328 136 or through email. [email protected]
