This article was authored by respected Zambian lawyer Sakwiba Sikota and first posted on his facebook page. Sakwiba is also opposition United Liberal Party president.
I am a big fan of Arsenal Football Club and their manager Arsene Wenger. I was therefore very disappointed when he childishly refused to show the common courtesy of shaking Jose Mourinho after Arsenal’s Community Shield Cup win last Sunday.
Even in our political arena we saw Emmanuel Mwamba go across and greet opposition leaders Edith Nawakwi, Nevers Mumba. Emmanuel Mwamba even extended his hand to Hakainde Hichilema in an attempt to greet the UPND leader who is seen to be the greatest threat to the Patriotic Front to which Mwamba belongs.
A handshake is generally seen as a sign of peace and declaration that one does not bear ill will against the person to whom the hand is extended. It also historically was seen as a sign that the person extending his hand did not have any hidden weapon.
This is the reason that hand shaking is a ritual found all over the world and across all cultures. In fact it is a sign of being cultured, a mark of respect, decorum and good sportsmanship.
Royalty do not generally shake hands with commoners and will at best extend a limp hand that lesser beings are expected to bow down to and kiss. It is for this reason that a handshake is seen as an expression that the two shakers consider themselves to be equals.
Some politicians have contributed to the handshake debate. American President George Washington must have considered himself royalty because he is reputed to have decided that shaking hands was for lower class citizens and he therefore only bowed when greeting people in public!
In sports we have seen many famous none handshakes like the Wayne Bridge snub of John Terry after Terry had been a little bit too familiar with Wayne’s partner. There was also Luis Saurez’s childish snub of Patrice Evra soon after coming from and eight match ban for racially abusing Evra. John Terry was also going to be at the centre of another handshake snub following his race row with Anton Ferdinand which resulted in the traditional pre match handshakes between Queens Park Rangers and Chelsea being cancelled.
Politicians, unlike footballers, have on the whole, with very few exceptions, shown greater maturity and sportsmanship than those who should carry the title of being sportsmen.
Of course there have been exceptions like when David Cameron was humiliated by French President Nicolas Sarkozy swerving away the English Prime Minister’s extended hand.
There are however many examples of politicians showing that they can be magnanimous and cultured by not engaging in handshake snubs. Famous political handshakes include Adolf Hitler and Neville Chamberlain clasping hands on September 23, 1938.
Harry Truman, Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin shook hands on July 25, 1945. Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin showed that they deserved the Nobel Peace Prize as they shook hands on March 26, 1979. Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat shook hands on September 13, 1993.
In 1972, President Richard Nixon made a handshake that shook the world by grasping Chairman Mao’s hand. U.S President Barack Obama grasped the hand of Cuban leader Raul Castro at Nelson Mandela’s memorial service. No one expected the two “great enemies” could ever shake hands.
In another unexpected symbolic act in 2014, Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II shook hands with Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness, who had previously been a member of the IRA. Imagine royalty actually shaking hands with a commoner! A commoner previously regarded as a particularly nasty one at that! Remember the Queen’s cousin, Lord Mountbatten was killed by the IRA.
If these historically hostile people were able to put aside their seemingly irreconcilable differences and pump hands instead of fists, what is to stop Zambian politicians from being propelled towards reconciliation. If that were to happen more often it would bring alive the Late Louis Armstrong’s enduring classic, “What a Wonderful World” where he sings,
“I see friends shaking hands,
Saying “How do you do?”
They are really saying,
“I love you.””
Are Zambian politicians going to be bigger than life and more like Chamberlain, Truman Churchill and Stalin, Sadat and Begin, Rabin and Arafat, the Queen and McGuinness, Obama and Castro? Or are they going to be as infantile and crass as Suarez, Terry, Sarkozy or Wenger?
After Wenger started with a win in the Community Shield it appears his snub of Jose Mourinho had its consequences as Arsenal were beaten at home by West Ham in a game which they should, at least on paper, won comfortably hands down.
Zambians should learn from what happened to Wenger and the next time they want to snub a handshake remember the karma of the handshake.
The post Opinion: The Karma of The Hand Shake appeared first on Zambia Reports.