In his satire, “The Animal Farm,” George Orwell brings out one poignant policy in the farm animal: that all animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others.

Reflecting on the chain of striking events by many civil servants in the recent past, I am cajoled to make an observation on the current scenario of poverty among the working classes in our nation in relation to Orwell’s line of thought.  Almost every time I pick up an issue of the JCTR Bulletin, I find an accurately done estimation of the total costs of an average family in Lusaka. 

It seems to me that the JCTR’s efforts to remind and encourage employers to pay their employees a just wage have been met with indomitable resistance by many employers, government included.  It really saddens and astounds me to hear that we can still have dehumanizing working structures in a nation that once claimed to be “Christian” (although I do not agree with the claim at all).

I personally have come to a conviction that while both humanization and dehumanization are real alternatives in our social and economical endeavours with respect to how well we treat each other or how much we pay others for their labour, the former is man’s due though it is constantly negated.  I think negation of this truth is tantamount to seeing the other as just a thing “seen” to me.

If I “see” you just as an object of my personal advantage, I cannot see you in the sense that I ought to, that is, as human as I am.  It is a pity such relationships are still entertained in areas of employment today.  The saddest part of “seeing” another is that as one dehumanizes the other, they themselves (the seer) become dehumanized.  Whilst the dehumaniser thinks he dominates in “seeing” the other, the other on the contrary, sees the dehumaniser “seeing” him.  The dehumaniser is seen by the dehumaniser dehumanising.

The Zambian civil servants, I am sure, must have seen the government “seeing” them for them (the civil servants) to have gone on strike.  If the situation where the duo (the seen and the seer) look at each other is left unchecked and allowed to perpetuate, this dehumanizing structure can free neither the dehumanized nor the dehumaniser.  As the dehumanized (the worker), fighting to be human, to be recognized as a person, takes away the dehumaniser’s power to dominate, by means of strike and demonstration, they restore to the dehumanisers the dignity they had lost in the exercise of injustice.

Unless we really vanquish this structure in both the private and public sectors, between employer and employee, even the fight against corruption remains futile and irrationally founded.  So it ultimately depends on one who feels “used” to redeem such an inhuman situation because the user (seer) enjoys the unjust privilege of “seeing” the other and will never realize the dignity of the “seen”.

There is enough money in our country for every civil servant to live a decent life if what the philosopher Aristotle calls “distributive justice” was honoured.  Every person, morally speaking, has the right to refuse to be “seen” as less human, to be taken as a mere tool to somebody’s ends.  There is no man that is more a “person” than the other.  As such, it is an affront to humanity and its dignity to consider other people as mere objects and means of production.

Teachers, magistrates, nurses and other civil servants, if anything, are at the kernel and the toughest point of service.  I see their striking activities as efforts of refusal to be objectified, to be “seen”.  In this regard, I wonder if I would be stretching the matter beyond elasticity if I were to adopt, still, Orwell’s farm policy that “all animals are equal but that some animals are more equal than others” for a situation where some people earn less than what can possibly humanize them.

Those who are familiar with Woodlands (where St. Dominic’s is situated) will agree with me that St. Dominic’s Major Seminary is located only a stone throw away from the main shopping complex.  Almost each time I go to the shopping complex to post my mail, I am able to identify at least one very senior government official, a minister, permanent secretary, etc.  I have questioned the necessity for these men driving such monstrous cars.  I have no doubt these “honourables” still have other cars for domestic uses.  I am not postulating that these men are in positions of sinecure.

But I do not see why one in his or her full senses cannot find reason to side with the poor civil servant in their striking efforts to cry only for what is just and human, nothing more!  They were not claiming for anything that would equate them with any senior government official.  It is only what one needs to live humanly in relation to the JCTR Basic Needs Basket.  The civil servants have “seen” the government “seeing” them and so they rightly went on strike to humanize both parties involved.  I could be too idealistic, but I think it is worth thinking about.

Privilege Haang’andu
St. Dominic’s Major Seminary
Lusaka