
Alan Tacca
Somewhere in his inauguration-related speeches, Donald Trump said that God had preserved him (after a would-be assassin’s bullet grazed his ear) for the purpose of making America great again.
If Uganda got another ruler with the temperament of Idi Amin, the buffoon and the barbarian, the man would not thank Amin’s ghost. He would claim to be God’s choice.
God is the fabled good guy with enormous magical power, with whom saints and rogues alike want to be associated.Being in a quiescent state, God cannot disown them, leaving a gap that some people enthusiastically fill with wild superstition.If God controlled the world’s assassins, were the two Kennedy’s, or Martin Luther King, or Mahatma Gandhi, or Sadat, or Rabin the most abominable monsters on earth who deserved elimination?What really happens depends on the overall competence of the assassin and the efficiency (or inefficiency) of the security arrangements in place.
The rest is luck; or, rather, the random happenings that may aid or hinder the plot.Similarly, there is no satanic or divine design behind the victims or survivors of the Los Angeles fires.Although many churches were destroyed, superstitious miracle mongers naturally inflate or otherwise distort the story of a church building that partly survived.
But if a relatively small modern church in a no-nonsense Los Angeles neighbourhood is sound-insulated, whether by Californian law or (non-Ugandan) social decency, it probably incorporates construction materials like fiberglass, which also happens to be fire-resistant.Ventilation will be via dedicated air-conditioning arrangements, not large open doors and windows.However demonic they may look, the Los Angeles fires were normal events involving combustible materials that were linked by proximity and wind.Far from being a miracle, the relative isolation (by insulation) and other variables may have given protection to a church, a night-club or a den of gangsters that many homes like Anthony Hopkins’ did not get.When Eight Bells Toll, The Silence of the Lambs, Red Dragon… and so on.
I was especially touched by Anthony Hopkins’ loss, because the silver screen had brought him in contact with so many grateful human beings.For the miracle mongers, even before God slid into His rest, nowhere did people wake up in the morning to find that He had planted a church, a bridge or any other structure as a miracle.Trump has castigated California’s authorities for mishandling the fires.
He urges America to speed faster and further ahead. He has signalled that countries around the world must do more for themselves instead of expecting American freebies.For some of the smaller events around the inauguration, like the prayer breakfast (which Trump himself did not even attend), two Nigerian pastors, Kumuyi and Bassey, were invited, presumably representing Trump’s engagement with Africa. Not top African political, tech or business leaders.
In a world of ever increasing challenges, the lesson from these invitations is counter-intuitive.It is not that we should pray more. We can pray more, if we want, and spin ancient biblical exploits into our future, because these are the things that seem to preoccupy us. Like many American Blacks and White conservatives.
Trump will deal with us in that matrix. He has no time for trying to change us.But to redeem the African continent and step to the high table where serious peers sit, our national leaders must be foresighted, plan better, work harder, and work with intelligence. And they must have a fierce desire to make their countries, not their bellies, their families or their political parties, great.
Mr Tacca is a novelist and socio-political commentator.
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