The Sunday News
Cetshwayo Zindabazezwe Mabhena
To call the devil by his real name and not conceal him by use of nicknames and other monikers is one of the foundational vocations of decoloniality as a philosophy of liberation. The critical task of unmasking oppressions, dominations and exploitations; and calling them by their names is a central plank of decolonial intellection and scholarship.
Today I treat the subject of evil that, under the cover of many names, seems to have totally overtaken world politics and has normalised and naturalised itself as the rule rather than the exception in world affairs. In the philosophical study of theodicy, philosophers, theologians and prophets have agonised over the question of why God Almighty in all his presence and power has allowed evil to prosper in the world. The crying prophet, the lamenting messenger, he who was chosen before he was born, politely asked God “righteous are You, O Lord, when I plead with you; yet let me talk with You about Your judgments. Why does the way of the wicked prosper? Why are those happy who deal so treacherously? (Jeremiah 12:1) The prophet Jeremiah lamented over the prosperity of evil and evil forces in the world and troubled the Creator about it.
Equally, the philosopher Epicurus asked stubbornly “is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able but not willing, then he is malevolent, is he both able and willing, then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing, then why call him God?” The problem of evil and human suffering has thrown prophets and philosophers alike into a vertigo and resulted in serious doubts about the holiness or the existence of God in the first place.
In the social sciences, psychologists have blamed evil on psychopaths, sick individuals that are driven to evil. Sociologists have blamed it on sociopaths, anti-social criminals that hate human happiness and do all they can to cause pain and suffering. Some religious individuals continue to blame evil and suffering in the world on the existence and mission of Lucifer and other expelled angels that will eventually be punished for their crimes.
Evil by other names
It seems to me that the greatest weapon of true evil in the world is its ability to circulate by other names and present itself through a multiplicity of guises and pretenses. The gifted French philosopher of communism, Alain Badiou in 1993 wrote an influential treatise, Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil, where he rejected both the philosophical and the social scientific understandings of evil. Badiou identifies evil as a problem of human beings and the institutions that they have created in the world, their knowledge and exercise of power.
In other words evil is not natural or is it normal, but it is a human invention and practice in pursuit of power and influence in the world. Empire builders, merchants, missionaries and terrorists have employed and deployed evil as a political strategy and a tool of conquest. Evil prospers in the world because those who seek political and social prosperity have found violence and sorcery itself as easier avenues to power and success. Enslavers, colonisers and imperialists used evil to get access to free human labour, cheap natural resources. The territories, lands and cultures of natives were invaded by the use of evil force and fraud.
When one ponders the political challenge of evil in the world the events of 9/11 in the United States of American forcefully present themselves as a telling example of evil par excellence. But evil does not always travel the world in its nakedness, announcing that it is evil and it has come to consume and conquer. The deadliest and most cruel forms of evil present themselves as struggles against and solutions to evil. The ability of evil to present itself as holiness is one of the themes that trouble the philosophical meditations of Alain Badiou and other thinkers that have applied their minds to the troubling subject.
Liberal capitalism and its parliamentary political system have been presented in the world as the only natural and viable system of governance and rule, and democracy has been represented as a dream for all humanity. From experience we have found out that liberal capitalism is pure evil where, as Badiou has argued, the money spent on perfume alone in the West would be enough to feed the whole of the poor population of the peoples of the Global South.
Democracy is a ruse and an illusion of all centuries that promises but does not give power to the so called people, the demos. Human rights have been used as an ideology to normalise and naturalise certain human wrongs by use of different names and monikers to conceal evil. Under the responsibility to protect NATO has undertaken the irresponsibility to invade other countries and impose inimical economic and political regimes. Badiou notes that we are told that “our democracy is not perfect but it’s better than dictatorships, our capitalism is unjust but is better than Stalinism.” In other words people are asked to tolerate one evil because it is at least better than its opposite evil, live with capitalism or else risk the tyranny of communism.
When evil does its work it does not call itself evil. It gives itself another name and another cause. Others claim to kill for God. Some claim to kill for the nation, the fatherland and the motherland. Mass murder and genocide are committed for democracy, security and human rights. For the love of country, patriotism, other people are killed and excluded. Evil never kills for the hatred of something; it always claims to kill for the love of something.
For the prevalence of evil under its many guises, politics in the world has not been practiced as the management of state power but a type of terrorism and punishment. It is for that sad reason that many organisations and movements in world politics always claim to be struggling against this and that not fighting for this and that. Political causes have been presented as causes against and not causes for something. Against is a potentially evil attitude.
The politics and philosophy of liberation
Perhaps the first evil in the world is the denial of truth and refusal to accept ethical thinking and practice. In politics there is no one truth but many truths and these have to compete and find a meeting point without the causing of pain and suffering, and the spilling of blood for victory. It is for that reason that Alain Badiou believes that the first activism should be activism for the truth, not activism for persons and parties. Activism for persons and parties leads to egoism and personalism that are forms of evil and operate as replacements and substitutions of God.
Egoistic politicians tend to replace human and national interests with their personal interests and privileges, the truths that are represented by other politicians are ignored as irrelevant and wrong, in the process politics degenerates into fundamentalism that is violent and evil. Egoistic politicians dream of a world that Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni describes in a forth coming book as a “world without others,” an evil paradisal world where one and his or her party have no opponents. Egoistic politicians dream of a world that is a big peaceful cemetery where there are no dissenting voices.
The dream of a world without opponents and without political enemies leads to genocidal fantasies where the individual politicians wish to eliminate opponents and assassinate enemies. The politics and philosophy of liberation are preoccupations of those that are against evil in the various ideologies and guises in which in presents itself in the world. In the politics and philosophy of domination, that is evil, some want to dominate others on the basis of geography and belonging, others are reduced to foreigners from elsewhere that must go back whence they came.
Others want to dominate the rest using history and time, that is opponents and enemies are reduced to those that were not born or were they there when politics began and must keep away from the struggle for power and life. Culture, language, religious beliefs and purity of blood are also used in evil politics to try and expel enemies and opponents from the game of life. Evil loves divisions, discriminations and exclusions; that is why at the centre of it all, colonial domination became an evil game of slicing up and parcelling out places and people for purposes of domination and exploitation. Yet others are excluded and dominated on the grounds of their gender, as women and inferiors that must keep to the kitchen and bedrooms, pure evil. The politics and philosophy of liberation, instead, seek unity in difference, peace in competition, and struggle in co-presence.
Cetshwayo Zindabazezwe Mabhena writes from South Africa: [email protected]
