I usually marvel when people, especially those who contribute to radio and television phone-in programs, start blaming inanimates like human rights for the “collapse” of discipline in schools and homes.
It is an easy scapegoat, isn’t it?  After all, the human rights activists are known to have loudly cried “Give the children their rights”!
The children, especially when told they shouldn’t be beaten by anyone, parents and teachers inclusive, and that they could invoke police actions whenever thus beaten, rushed into the streets, the bars, the brothels and every other place which, growing up in our strict old days, were the preserve of adults and in some cases, like brothels,
probably hadn’t even come into existence.
The children faced up to their disenchanted parents and teachers and told them off in the name of human rights.  Look, this tiny fellow shows up dead drunk in the wee hours of the night and, faced with the prospect of a sound parental beating, just whips up the commonest and perhaps now expected reaction “I have my rights; why are you asking me where I was?”
If or when the parent or guardian gets so offended he prepares to whip the fellow to pieces, he is told “I will go to VSU and get you arrested if you just but touch me, ol’ bally.  I gut my rights” causing the person who with his wife made this miserable little creature here on earth to give up his intended disciplinary measures so abruptly and helplessly.
Any wonder such person will call in to a program on radio which features rightists and lambasts them senseless? Yet, as I have come to realise over the years, the problem is simply that the whole concept of child rights has been so misunderstood by both children and adults (those that superintend over them).
In the process, the children proudly claim human rights which don’t exist while, due to ignorance about what this creature called human rights really is, the parents and teachers dejectedly cower in awe and fear, especially when they hear the term Victim Support Unit mentioned in the aftermath of serious misconduct by their children.
Listen to me dear colleagues, fellow parents.  I have in the course of my duty based research and interaction with human rights activists while at
the International Institution read every international agreement or treaty that has been originated by the United Nations, the African Union and other regional bodies. None of them gives children the right to disregard parental or school or other authority, drink every alcoholic beverage they can lay their tongues on, or fornicate all
over the shore like their lives depend on it then get home and challenge their uncomfortable parents.
All the literature on child rights attempts to emphasize the opposite: that parents, guardians and other adults should be given the leeway to help in the development of
children into useful, responsible citizens of the world, physically, health wise, education wise, mentally and so on.
The parents can surely not do such an onerous task by being frightened off by their puny little sons and daughters and by unleashing the cops when the parents set on them with correctional measures.
What I know for a fact is that beating of children is indeed roundly condemned in these documents with other “more civilised” disciplinary modes encouraged.
The world will quarrel endlessly on the need or otherwise for parents to be allowed to clobber their children when they are found with disciplinary cases to answer.
I want to postulate today that all the above arguments taken into account, so much of the waywardness we see in our kids (including hard core nincompoops like our Pachikani and Mpachikeni) may have a lot more to do with how so easily exposed they have become to all sorts of foreign media from the so called open societies of the West which have
little to do with human rights.
Whether I like it or not, those silly phones which our twins insisted on having because all their friends do have them have exposed them to all sorts of things which I the parent may have no idea about.  The rascals ARE on Facebook and I guess they can also access the Internet and view, when they want, big black totally naked women from the Caribbean, or even witness live, the disgusting act of men licking each other’s lips and doing the most unthinkable things to each other.
When it is time to watch dance programs on TV, you have to pass by and see them glued to Channel O or Trace and so on and see how scantily dressed are the dancing characters, and how their dance steps are generally so seductive, suggestive of sex, evil!  The number of parents who have lost their parental control to these gadgets and the
things our children can watch, sometimes not in our homes but elsewhere with friends, on laptops we bought for their use in school, etc. is very high.  Now to tell the truth, the children don’t have the right to watch these morally corrupting things.
Those international agreements I talked about emphasise that we should protect the children from negative influences especially as they may permeate society through media.  WE, the parents, are the failures.  Even when we hold a child’s birthday party and all our little kids start bobbing their backsides in the most obscene fashion, all in the name of dancing, and of course dressed in the very provocative fashions they discover from their media, we applaud loudly and say “These children can dance!”  Dance?  That immoral shake and wiggle wouldn’t pass for dancing in my childhood days when our parents had total control over us.
They would cane your backside sore for being naughty and exposing infamies in the presence of adults.  They would tell you that by dancing in such unpalatable fashion, you have no respect for the adults present and, after the whacking, as you rub your sore bum-side, they would tell you to disappear before they replanted the cane on your hard little rear things again! “Futsek!” they would shout. “Chokaapaa!”
I have in recent times been invited to all sorts of websites or social networks where the happenings are not so innocent.  I really don’t know why I accepted the invitation but on one such network, there were women normally aged 45 and above asking for friendship with men aged 35 to 60.  They described themselves, placed their best photos and if
you were interested, you initiated contact.
These are wonderful middle aged Zambian women, lonely to the bone, seeking male companionship through such media.  Now, surely there isn’t anything wrong with a lonely woman, tired of waiting to be approached, advertising that way.  The worry I have is that if 66 adventurous males, 66 per cent of who are handsome or good looking all apply to
one woman, how many will she have the courage or good will or morals to turn down after provoking their interest?  I fear with the levels of sexual immorality I have witnessed over the recent few years, this probably opens up a flurry of sexual escapades with multiple partners.
Where and how is not my business but after responding to two or so such ladies, I stopped because I got worried I was just going to end up being one among several toys at the disposal of lonely elderly women.
We would all queue up and deliver our best services and be called upon one after the other, to the extent that heroes like myself would even lose weight recklesslyproviding sexual pleasures to women who would by now not be lonely anymore.
Don’t argue with me because I know what I am talking about.  I was fished off Facebook because of my fame as the buffoon that I am.  Even kids just above 18 have sought my friendship on Facebook and let me just confess.  After much tact and careful persistent pestering, one or two such kids got me where they wanted: Mixture MeexyNjombwinjo in a bed in a nondescript rest house (masquerading as a lodge) with underage girls!  Yes, straight off Facebook into the register of aimless fornicators with kids who obviously had already so frequently done what you thought  you would be teaching them.
So, knowing as you now know, I want you to agree that we the adults haven’t been the best examples, with dangerous activities like fornication replacing visitation as a pass time, while our kids watch.
We are totally to blame for their bad manners.  Whenever my parents had time to spare, they didn’t go jumping into taxis with tinted windows with other people’s spouses straight into hotels, lodges, guest and rest houses to go and pound the sexual senses out of them.
They visited relatives, went to watch Mganda and Fwemba dance competitions and other such decent things.  We usually accompanied them and learned no bad manners! Today, you have no idea who is rubbing the behind of whoever else’s wife and getting ready to provide horizontal services which are otherwise readily available, holy and
just, in their own matrimonial bedroom.
Rotten society!  And we are part of the stinking rot.  No hiding, Pastor.   We saw you parked in a secluded area around 21hours with that deaconess Hachigabalalaor the worship and praise team leader, Sister Lutangu!