Page 86 - Msingi Afrika Magazine Issue 7

COMMUNITY
another, noses out and plastic
bags in the freezer. Alternatively
they are simply kept in check
through the use of force or the
threat of it. The law simply has
no life to offer because even
when fully obeyed, it turns
the minds and the hearts of
the people into those who are
solely focused on satisfying the
expectations of one another
and defining and designing a
reality filled with ever-increasing
guidelines, rules, policies and
laws that continue to trap them
in a world where they will never
fulfill their purpose or know true
liberty.
The question is, what are we to
do? Many will shudder at the
thought of a country or world
that is unbound by the guide-
lines provided by the law and
will firmly and in the strongest
of terms seek to defend it. But
I have a question. Can we
sincerely say that the law has
managed to provide order or
has it actually been the instru-
ment of great injustice? Truth
be told, the law has provided
greater access and control to
those who seek lordship over
others to do whatever they feel
like at any point in time and
simply change what is written
to suit their own ends. By so
doing, the law has itself become
the system that supports and
engenders the injustice that it
says it exists to stop.
I fervently believe that despite
the general argument that the
law enables us to protect the
weak and the innocent from
those who would harm them,
that the exact opposite is true
and that furthermore, the law
has become the tool by which
the fallen nature of man is
actually allowed to thrive and
perpetuate from generation
to generation. That the prison
86 | heal . restore . rebirth . Afrika
system has become a for-profit
business run by private sector
entities in some countries, that
security is now a commercial
sector contributing taxes to the
government, that people need
professionals to interpret what
should have been a simple
code of honor between them-
selves (no offense to the pro-
fessionals concerned, some are
my family members) but that
these are actually corporate
concerns that are now contrib-
uting to the capitalist system,
should tell you something about
the law. Much like the approach
taken to enforce the Covid-19
requirements in most countries,
where there is no active push
to build up the immunity of the
people through diet, exercise,
exposure to sunlight and fresh
air, similarly the approach to the
law has not been an attempt
to rehabilitate the people who
were said to have erred, nor
has it been an attempt to repair
what aspects of dishonor and
injustice exist in society that
triggered the behaviors that
these people displayed. Rather,
the approach to the law has
been one of identifying types
of people known as ‘criminals’
and building a system to punish
them. It’s funny, but not funny
when you look back and learn
some of society’s origin stories.
There is a pastor I heard say
once that the pioneers in Amer-
ica started prisons to isolate
errant members of the society
from the general community for
a time, invest love and energy
to help them understand their
errors and help rehabilitate
them using Bible teachings so
that they could return and be
productive members of soci-
ety. He said that they were so
successful at doing this that
the government thought, “What
a great idea,” and took over
the program and the result is
what you see today. Many who
are incarcerated are not guilty,
those who are continue to run
their criminal activities even
from prison, those who were not
guilty sometimes turn to crime
themselves, those who are
released sometimes continue
where they left off and mean-
while the society that caused
the problem in the first place
remains the same or gets in-
creasingly worse in nature and
continues to produce ‘criminals’.
I watched a video recently
which was recorded in 2019,
where two men in South Afrika
were being interviewed about
what they do. They candidly
said that they were criminals
who rob and threaten people.
When asked why, they said,
“We want money.” They ex-
plained their predicament clear-
ly, they need money in order to
engage in society but because
of their background they can-
not get employed in order to
earn money and so they have
resorted to crime so that they
can have money to buy food, to
have a place to live and so on.
That is the society we have cre-
ated and seem to work so dili-
gently to defend. One in which
those who lack resources are
deemed to somehow be wicked
or failures in some shape or
form and it is an acculturated
belief too. The ones who have
money and status say that you
have to work hard to earn sta-
tus in life, but have no answer
to give to the construction work-
er or manual laborer who truly
does exert both muscle and
brain to his labors diligently and
faithfully. Why do they not have
this money? I was in my forties
before I realized that a person
who doesn’t have money is not
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