The earth is constantly in motion with its fiercely hot interior erupting from time to time and its surface shifting restlessly. There are ‘faults’ (cleavages) running roughly north south along the west coast of the Americas, the east coast of Asia and through Africa into the Mozambique channel. Our Rift Valley erupts regularly as it did recently in Rwanda causing loss of life and much damage. This restlessness is due to the shifting of the ‘plates’ or areas of the globe that wrestle with one another like two elephants causing the grass to shudder.
I know these plates are called ‘tectonic’ but what does that mean. Reach for the dictionary! The word comes from the Greek for carpenter tekton. Immediately one thinks, ‘so the earth is still being fashioned?’ It is still on the carpenter’s bench. These plates or panels still don’t quite fit. Creation is still incomplete.
And now it is used as a metaphor for the ongoing tension in Kenya where those who are struggling for an agreement are locked in lengthy talks with those who want there to be winners (themselves) and losers (the others).
But perhaps these tectonic plates do not only run through eastern Africa but throughout the continent. Moeletsi Mbeki, writing in the South African Sunday Tribune, commented recently on the resistance to change in Zimbabwe and Southern Africa in general over the past 10 years.
As Zimbabwean society became increasingly more sophisticated, its citizens became better educated and more prosperous; they also demanded a greater say in how their country was run. The emergence of these new, well-organised, cosmopolitan and vocal constituencies that were no longer interested in the politics of race, but in the accountability of governance, has struck fear in the hearts of established rulers, not only in Zimbabwe, but in the whole of Southern Africa. It is this fear of fundamental social and political change that explains Southern African governments’ solidarity with Zanu (PF) and Mugabe.
Human society, like individual people, both fear and desire change. They resist it because it threatens to end their comfortable status quo and opens the door to the unknown. Yet they want it because that residue of goodness in every human heart knows progress and justice is impossible without it. These two forces, like tectonic plates rub against one another. They have a long history. Jesus commented on them: ‘nobody who has been drinking old wine wants new. The old is good they say’ (Luke 5:39).
As we approach the elections and rivals call each other names, this fundamental rift shows itself once again. Will we have the wisdom, and the freedom, to vote in a way that advances the plans of the One who was both Son of God and ‘son of the carpenter’? (Matt 13:55).
Post published in: Opinions