The anger and distaste directed online at both current and deceased political leaders point to a deeply wounded society. Reading between the lines of social media content, one senses an ongoing, deeply emotional ‘digital mourning.’
Studies in anthropology provide a holistic understanding of humanity across time and space, in an integrated context that encompasses the interrelatedness of human conditions, cultures, biology, language, and social structures, both past and present (Konrad Kottak, Anthropology, 2000). Inquiries about death as a sociocultural and anthropological reality fall under this domain of study.
To begin, in African anthropology, death is considered a process, a rite of passage, and even a change of environment. Being fully dead is being remembered by the living; that is, one is transferred from the ‘now’ (sasa) to the ‘deep past’ where the dead become ancestors (John Mbiti, African Religions and Philosophy, 1969). But becoming an ancestor is not automatic; it is a status earned based on how one lived and died (Igor Kopytoff, Ancestors as Elders in Africa, 1971).
Again, with regard to grief, influenced by the philosophy of Ubuntu captured in the words “I am because we are”, grief is considered a communal, ritualised, and cosmic responsibility. It is a collective duty in which the burden of loss is shared (Desmond Tutu, No Future Without Forgiveness, 1999). Among the Dinka people of Sudan, scholars ascertain an understanding of grief as a form of protest and lamentation, where mourners demand an explanation from the Creator and express overwhelming despair (Francis Mading Deng, Dinka Cosmology, 1980). John Mbiti (op.cit. 1969) explores much more deeply how African grief evolves into the veneration of ancestors.
This prefacing is to help shed light on how death and the dead have been treated with seriousness and respect in the past. It also validates a meaningful discourse on the existing chasm or disconnect in the worldviews then and today, in an informed sociocultural context and historical continuum, inasmuch as reality is not denied, and public opinion is qualified as valid. The latter includes the opinions expressed online via social media, as it is an indispensable social player with a lot of true feelings laid bare. Hence, Manuel Castells, in his book Communication Power (2009), calls Social Media “mass self-communication.”
The anger and distaste that is poured on the internet towards existing and deceased political leaders points to a deep state of woundedness within the society’s life. Hearing and reading the opinions between the lines in the content published on social media, a subjective emotional perception adjudges that there is already a deep ongoing “digital mourning” if we are to use the concept of a thanatologist (expert in scientific studies of death, dying, and bereavement), Carla Sofka (2012).
In this 'Digital Mourning,' we can perceive a persistent cry for accountability and acknowledgment of extreme wrongdoing. It is a sign of protest against invitations to mourn “some and not others” given the deprived “closure”, numerous unanswered questions, and an enduring state of fear all around, should people openly express how they feel.
In simplified wording, the mockery can be a mishmash of people’s expression of being wounded, and their direct protest against acts and processes considered as institutionalised injustices. These are often hidden in the veneer of politicised legalistic rhetoric, framing, intersectoral bureaucracy shielded by a facade of legitimacy. They may also involve the perceived compromise of human rights through cruelty and weaponisation of administrative processes, and accusations of structural violence which are credibly voiced and sanctioned internationally, yet unattended locally due to a widely considered hegemonic autocracy, to which those in leadership are considered beneficiaries howsoever; Quacumque ratione.
Thus, public refusal to mourn needs to be addressed from the circumstances behind it as they are and not as dictated upon. True grief is not political and cannot be politicised as it goes above and beyond political dimensions. While fear can enforce silence, it cannot erase the pain felt by individuals or the collective trauma that has already shaped society’s shared memory and experience. The fact that it is a new thing that even recent years have not seen narrows down the inquiry circle, should genuine solutions be desired in this matter.
Globally, collective grief and pain stretched to intolerable limits have led to the most undesirable, complex, and endless fractures with violence and cruelty claiming many lives. Some countries are now referred to as “Trauma States” because of extreme conditions resulting from structural divide and inter-generational transmission of pain, grievances, and desire for vengeance, leaving large percentages of their population wounded and in need of specialised trauma and mental health care, amidst the already unbearable living conditions.
If change is genuinely desired, problems have to be addressed in truth, and persons have to be held accountable in accordance with the provisions of the law, which ideally, no one stands above. The factions of religion and even serious state-related ‘dynamics’ point to a danger that will pull the nation backwards if they are not addressed properly and in a timely manner. Wounds are not healed by being ignored.
Shimbo Pastory is a Tanzanian advocate for positive social transformation and a student at the Loyola School of Theology, Ateneo de Manila University, Philippines.
