What Does Richard Chirombo Say On Martyrs: We Are All Martyrs

THE MARTYR IN US
By Richard Chirombo

Life is very short- though a little longer than when human beings begun.

This fact has, throughout the long ages, spurred the human mind to concoct ways through which living could be overly productive. The main purpose is that all passengers in this short journey may ultimately, when all this is over, stand up and claim to have had a good ride during their brief span.

The Romans and Greeks, people with a long history of martyrdom and martyrs, realized this thousands of years ago, and concluded that only under circumstances beneficial to a family, community or empire should man take his life away. Yet, at first, the Romans and Greeks frequently committed suicide and no one thought it immoral.

This could be one of the reasons people, especially in Rome , found it a bit unnerving to pay with their lives the price of freedom from fear and oppression. The country is replete with a long history of martyrs it begins to appear as if martyrdom was just one of those avenues of passing time.

A martyr, for a start, is someone who dies or suffers greatly for his beliefs. And this has often raised questions over the real difference between martyrs who die for national causes, and those who die or suffer purely for personal gain.

This is a thin line historians struggle to cut through, and raises questions over whether there is a ‘private’ martyr (those who die for personal gain, but happen to share a common lack with a given population that people begin to believe they sacrificed their lives or comfort for them), those who do it because of fear that, if they do not do it, someone else will do it, or those who fall into it because, if they did not, nobody could do it (the courageous type who dare authority and challenges it to a contest of either reason, psychological warfare or pure militancy.

Experts into human behaviour, including renowned author Michael Steven Bleby, indicate that real martyrs are those who die or suffer greatly for the sake of others, so long as they are indispensable.

Bleby adds that if someone suffers death or injury because of opposition to injustices, and it is highly probable that if someone else was in the same position at the same time, then they could have done it as well- forget about calling such people national heroes, let alone national martyrs. They merely found themselves at the wrong time, for the wrong reasons!

Real martyrs often sprout if- in the face of a cohesive, political elite, or a bureaucracy of a dominant ruling class- the ordinary man, with ordinary hopes and aspirations cannot have their voice heard, or have no prospect of a positive response from those in authority. A martyr, like a Biblical prophet, then rises up.

In other words, national martyrs are shaped by circumstances, especially when social injustices abound, at least according to Dr. Pearson Ntata, Director for the Centre for Social Research at Chancellor College, a constituent college of the University of Malawi.

It is an act of courage or, in other words, a matter of the contest of the human mind with oppressive social, political, economic, religious, cultural realities. Their objective is not to understand the world or oppressive systems and leaders anymore; it is to change circumstances.

Not that such people have no qualms about it, or do not care about their lives. They may have some inner arguments about the meaning of what they have set out to do, and are sometimes wary of their own missions and explanations. But they always do it for the common good, and next generations are always there to revere them.

‘This is understandable,” says Undule Mwakasungura, Chairperson and Executive Director for the Human Rights Consultative Committee and Centre for Human Rights and Rehabilitation, respectively. “Why am I saying so? Because, in most cases, national martyrs’ battles revolve positive hope for the future; a future they will never be there to enjoy.”

It must really be some sort of strange human behaviour; fighting for a world you may not be there to see. But this is in-built for the human being, as old as time itself, says Mwakasungula. In other words, he says, martyrdom has no timeline as evidenced by the fact that, while we already have so many martyrs around the world, people continue to die for what they believe in.

The word martyr has even become more prominent during the past forty years.

Civil society organisations and political parties point to the late Speaker of Parliament, Rodwell Munyenyembe, as a classic example of Malawi ’s modern day martyr: He lost his life in the process of fighting for peace in a chaotic August House that was the 2004-2009 crop of Members of Parliament.

And, yet, he died in the so called peaceful Malawi .

“He (Munyenyembe) was a man of peace and order; he is a martyr,” said People’s Federation for National Peace and Development Executive Director, Edward Chaka. Mwakasungura, Billy Banda of Malawi Human Rights Watch, and even Alliance for Democracy sole legislator Khwauli Msiska agree.

Martyrdom is timeless because life never proceeds along a straight line; it is replete with twists and turns, and these are the surprises we get in our everyday life. It is not unlike life to often have alternative political, religious, economic dark ages looming. These are mainly caused, like most before, by the kick back of human mismanagement of ourselves and others, and the scanty basic resources on which modern civilization is based.

The only difference could be that, this time, global is the scale.

Historians such as professor Kings Phiri will always agree that human history has always been about challenges, inventions, opportunities and discoveries. And the world now continues to face a myriad of challenges, some of which need human courage to surmount. A martyr’s mind would thus convince him not only to get angry, but act in a way most likely to bring about positive change, even if it translates into the loss of their own lives.

The real martyr cannot bear the sight of his country collapse under the weight of tyranny and oppression but will fight for the future, a world where freedom and respect for human rights enjoy same privileges accorded to such basic necessities as the water we drink, food, shelter, clothes, oxygen.

Sometimes, individual efforts have resulted into whole revolutions and mass protests. But whether martyrs’ courageous acts will broaden into a full scale revolution depends entirely on the scale of oppression.

And whether the efforts of people who engage in martyrdom acts will be appreciated, depends entirely on a nation’s perspective. In Malawi , for example, the general feeling seems to be that somebody still living cannot be a martyr, to the effect that most of those upon which martyrdom is bestowed are humans no longer being.

A good case in point could be that of Dr. Vera Chirwa. She must be a living martyr by all standards because she, too, suffered alongside her husband Orton. It was because of something they, like the rest of the then widely traveled population, believed in.

Today, do we cerebrate her life? That is everybody’s soul-searching question. But one thing is for sure; she has suffered her fare share of humiliation.

Remember the time she openly declared her intention to contest for the Mgwirizano Coalition presidency? People seemed less enthusiastic about it that she was forced to complain, publicly.

“People don’t want to support me because I am a woman,” Dr. Chirwa complained at the time.

This brings us to the question of how Malawian society perceives martyrs. Gender stereotypes still rule and, because of that, male names dominate the list of martyrs. In the absence of national standards on what qualifies one to become a national martyr and hero, society is sure to continue overlooking women for such accolades.

“This is very sad in deed. It is high time Malawians started looking beyond gender stereotypes and recognized that women, too, can influence positive change. Gone are the days when it was accepted to say ‘Behind every successful man there is a woman’. These people work together, taking equal, measured steps. Women contributed a lot towards independence and the respect for human rights,” says Emmie Chanika, executive director for Civil Liberties Committee.

Chanika feels that Malawian women have played a pivotal role in boosting men’s morale, especially needed when men are about to go on tough missions. It begins with preparing the man’s mind, putting it in positive, confident gear. But they get little, or no, public appreciation from their efforts.

The human rights activist is speaking common sense. Various psychological studies have shown that unity of the spirit (conscience) is far more important than unity in form (the outward composure of people). That is why we have prisoners of conscience, they conclude, when there is no freedom of mind, and this happens when people see things go haywire and merely watch.

One’s unity in form (physical appearance) will always be overwhelmed by the war within. That could be the reason such prisoners of conscience as Jack Mapanje, Atati Mpakati and others are highly respected: They saw the lack of unity in spirit and responded in form by putting their thoughts on paper, going into exile.

Courageous people know there will always be challenges of reason and that, after reaching the limit of endurance, there will be need to throw every ounce of energy into the struggle for individual and national survival. This they do after convincing themselves that they will carry the struggle to the bitter end, with no compromises in mid journey.

When things do not go according to plan, the martyr-minded individual has to make touch choices: Should I seek peace and court disaster, or fight on and die a free man in the process? Should I give up and access the conditions of a dictated surrender? It must, however, be remembered that the martyr is a peace-minded individual, who will never cease to send out peace signals of one kind or another. All they do is fight for what they believe in.

Martyrs’ day is all about cerebrating the living, and those no longer being, who once realized the full meaning of the ‘point of no return’ and contributed towards what we now call freedom- both in spirit and form.

John Chilembwe could be one such person, though varying schools of thought are beginning to develop over his real intentions, and real position in Malawian society. The fact remains that he died, and died because he wanted real freedom for himself and others.

There are no arguments among Malawian historians over this. Renowned historians Desmond Dudwa Phiri and Kings Phiri see nationalistic traits in the Chiradzulu hero, and say his efforts helped open up the minds of people as to the real meaning of freedom.

His Western experiences helped spur him into action, and that is a true trait of a national hero. Chilembwe was a man of many missions: as a pastor, he would have loved to see his congregation grow. And, yet, he put freedom at the top of his priorities and died believing in freedom for all people.

Political analysts agree that a real martyr and national hero is one who dies fighting for those common symbols of an independent nation state: A national flag; national anthem; national currency; and emblem. They also agree, however, that before the emergence of the State, political martyrs were hard to come by because life was still all about chiefs.

It was expected that chiefs were not supposed to order their people, but depend on them, and protect them. Except for the occasional tussling over chieftainship, life was largely good, with little conflict.

Then, came the phenomenon of the national state. It traces its history to 500 BC in Mexico , following the foundation of the Monte Alban as a new Capital for the Zapotecs. Whether this move was prompted by the need for local cooperation in managing water resources or by common interests in defence remains unclear.

What is clear is that it was evident- from the site’s architecture, its symbolism, and the rulers dominance over the surrounding villages and further conquests- that a more powerful and centralized form of rule had arisen: the State.

That gave rise to cases of political martyrdom, as opposed to the more dominant religious martyrdoms. It is important to note that, though human beings are always striving towards perfection, what they aspire for never becomes perfect. So there is always one type of conflict or another. The result is that national states level in the richness of these conflicts.

Thus, in this in built conflict, conservationists will always battle with developers, pedestrians with motorists, city officials with vendors, evaluators with ratepayers, rivers with industrial pollution, multistory buildings casting shadows of solar machines, opposition politicians fighting those in authority.

In the process, some will always loose their lives and be martyred by their own, or next, generations.

As Malawians commemorate those courageous figures wearing the tag of martyrdom, it must always be remembered that some of tomorrow’s martyrs could now be living in us. Those in power should also remember that leadership is a balanced affair; real leaders prevent conflict from degenerating into the shedding of blood or human suffering for those proffering dissenting; the common practice is to accommodate those views and include them into our programmes of national action.

But, as fate has it for us, there will always be martyrs. Where, and whenever progress is slow, martyrs arise. Some of these may be living, hiding, in us.