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When we allow cheats into our lives, we create monsters who prey on us and ours

Saturday August 22 2015

We are all aware of the ill effects that cheating can cause us and the pain that is felt when people we trust turn out to be fake or bogus.

But it has often been revealed that some of the most “successful” individuals are actually nothing more than sweet-talking shysters or grandstanding braggarts.

These characters often “succeed” in their deceitful enterprises because, apart from their well-practised ability to present themselves as people they really are not, those they choose to victimise are themselves gullible.

Gullibility is that quality among humans that makes us ready to believe what we see or hear without too much scrutiny, especially if it is well recounted or presented in full colour.

We are all guilty of gullibility, except for the confirmed cynic who, according to one sage, believes that all people are as bad as he or she is.

That is the kind of person who will look first left, then right and then left again before he or she crosses a one-way street. You never know.

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In the world where we live, one can never be too careful. Politicians, businessmen, traders, craftsmen, clergymen, healers, sportsmen and others are all out to take advantage of your naiveté and get something from you.

Of course, some of them may be doing this as a form of amusement, and we willingly go to them to be “cheated,” like when we go pay to see magicians and conjurers.

At other times, when it is not a laughing matter, the damage done maybe dismissible because its ill effects are seen as being light and of no real consequence. This may even include the usual cajoling of most politicians.

In other cases, however, the damage becomes grave and its effects devastating for individuals and communities. Think of the sporting world and the scourge of doping, for instance.

The public simply adores people whose sporting exploits turn them into demigods, capable of defying the principles of gravity and kinetic energy.

When it transpires that these supermen and superwomen have been cheating, using performance-enhancing substances to gain advantage over their rivals, we feel badly cheated, we are bitter, and lose more than a little faith in whatever sport it is.

We got that feeling with Ben Johnson and Marion Jones some time ago, and, more recently, with Lance Armstrong. This last was even hailed as the man who wrestled cancer to the ground and came back to win the Tour de France, only to be disgraced as a cheat and a bully.

But there exists a certain hierarchy of villainy at the top of which sit those sick, absolutely reprehensible people who exploit the positions of trust they find themselves in in relation to vulnerable people to hurt the same people they profess to be taking care of.

Such is the Roman Catholic priest Ivan Payne of Ireland, who sexually abused children under his care for a long time because his colleagues and superiors looked the other way simply because those who suspected his behaviour were more worried about the reputation of the Church than about the children whose lives he destroyed completely. He eventually was jailed.

Such is the maverick BBC television and radio entertainer Jimmy Savile, who, pretending to be a do-gooder and a charity fundraiser for vulnerable children and mental patients, sexually abused the very people he was supposed to help.

This despicable lowlife — though he lived in vivid and loud colours that should have made him visible — was not exposed till one year after his death at the age of 84. One shudders to think of the damage such longevity did to those unfortunate enough to come into contact with that evil man.

Now we are told that the former British prime minister, the late Edward Heath, is being investigated for paedophilia. We cannot know what the outcome will be, but one thing is certain: If people were less credulous, if they had taken care to examine these individuals, if they had not been willing to look the other way, these monsters would have been discovered long before they actually were.

Jenerali Ulimwengu is chairman of the board of the Raia Mwema newspaper and an advocate of the High Court in Dar es Salaam. E-mail: [email protected]

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