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Aphrodisiac of power spawns to many rapes as seen in Hollywood and politics

Tuesday October 17 2017
weinstein

Hollywood icon, Harvey Weinstein, is being accused by scores of women of having sexually harassed or raped them. PHOTO | AFP

By JENERALI ULIMWENGU

The sick psyche of the rapist is multi-facetted. It can take the shape of a sex maniac, whose insatiable urges cannot find a consensual playmate; it can be lust for power, or fortune, or fame that cannot be secured through hard and intelligent work.

But oftentimes, the rapist is drawn to his or her victim through normal intercourse, like when a trusted person ends up resorting to forceful action to satisfy themselves.

Many rapes are date rapes. And many revolve around a power relationship, the rapist being the powerful actor, the victim being the weaker party.

We are currently being treated to salacious stories of the doings of one of the icons of Hollywood, Harvey Weinstein, who is being accused by scores of women of having sexually harassed or raped them. This man was so powerful and glamorous through his cinematographic products, such as Shakespeare in Love and The King’s Speech that one would have thought women would be swooning for a kiss from him.

But the powerful man, driven by a sense of entitlement, will want to take what is given him alongside what is not given; that is the essence of absolute power.

In politics, a date rape takes place when the political rapist is someone who was democratically invited to political power but who, in the fullness of time, rapes his country and people by grabbing power that is not his to exercise.

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The absolutely horrifying example of this is Adolf Hitler, who was elected in a landslide by the Germans in 1933, but, in short order, proceeded to rape his own people, before “shanghaiing” them into raping many other nations. Many a tyrant we see in our midst today came in on a date but turned rapist when they saw an opportunity.

Appetites grow with the exercise of unfettered power, and since they say power is the ultimate aphrodisiac, it makes hunks of eunuchs.

Which is why individuals known to be intellectual pedestrians suddenly become most enlightened and able to give lectures on everything under the sun, because they now know everything. Where do they acquire all their smarts?

Donald Trump is such a one. He has challenged his foreign minister to an IQ test, because Rex Tillerson has called him a moron. But before that IQ test is carried out, Trump thinks that the media must be reined in, because they are full of false news, which makes them always report him in a negative light.

He is actually seriously suggesting that the media licences of irksome media be cancelled, and these will certainly include those who report the worsening chaos in his White House and the creeping Russia investigation that is refusing to go away.

We who live and operate in banana republics perfectly understand Trump’s mindset. We live with people whose thinking is joined at the hips with his.

Disregard for the law

Media outlets in our countries are banned without a thought simply because the Information minister thinks he has the power to do so, even when he actually does not.

In Tanzania, such a minister happens to be a law “professor,” but he has not so much as read the law he invokes when issuing his ostensible bans.

Weinstein harassed so many women because the power he wielded as a top honcho in Hollywood made him think he could do as he pleased with impunity.

The first media people who came across the story were threatened with financial destruction through expensive lawsuits, as were the first women to come out and accuse him.

Trump, who has said things that would place him very close to Weinstein, is threatening news media with closure, a very African thing. That this “moron” can even think, let alone talk, of such a thing as violating the American constitutional tenet of press freedom, is a scary thing. But then that is how low America has sunk.

Gladly, it tells us we are all human. Between our law teacher in Dar es Salaam, the Hollywood movie mogul and the man in the Oval Office, runs a thread that connects our dysfunctional essences as we interact with colleagues and constituents.

If indeed power be such a potent aphrodisiac, and if it be given to those who can hardly negotiate a consensual liaison, we’ll soon discover they have been buggering lampposts.

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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