Courting Disaster

  

We, as a country, are flirting with disaster when we choose to ignore the rehabilitation of the children who went through the horrors that befell us after the 2007 elections. As we cheer on the self-serving fiends who landed us all in this mess in the first place, we should spare a thought for those children who watched as their family members were hacked to death, had their heads sawn off, were forcibly circumsiced with pieces of glass, were burnt to death, were raped, were sodomised.


Such a senseless display of disregard for human life does teach the young ones that human life is not to be esteemed. Further to the dehumanising poverty that is an everyday reality to them, they go through more desensitisation in the IDP camps where they have, no doubt, witnessed people engaging in sexual practices.


Some of the most notorious serial killers were exposed to much the same. Henry Lee Lucas, who killed some 40 people, was on many occasions forced by his mother, an alcoholic prostitute, to watch as she had sex with men. Charles Ray Hatcher, convicted of killing 16, watched as his oldest brother, Arthur Allen, was electrocuted by a kite that hit a high-voltage power line. Carroll Cole, also convicted of killing 16, was taken along by his mother and forced to watch as she had sexual encounters with men while his father went to fight in World War II.

We should then not be surprised when a new generation of rapists and murderers unleashes its passionate terror in the years to come since, after all, we are breeding it right now.