ABSTRACT
How can we understand the self-righteous entitlement culture that Melber describes? I offer a moral explanation, which is rooted in the fact that these freedom fighters operated by the Manichean binarism that justified the struggle in the first place. They believed they were fighting for a just cause and that they literally embodied the good; the oppressors were, logically and justifiably, the embodiment of evil. After independence, the freedom fighters, having been habituated to the idea of combating evil, remained fixed on the idea that they were the sole embodiment of all that was good. Any opposition to their ideas or governing styles must therefore be an opposition to what they embodied. Seeing the world in simplistic binary terms of black/white, good/evil, and clinging to that paradigm with religious tenacity, the freedom fighters began to construct their societies to reflect their naive vision, and with an intensity equal to that with which they fought their historical enemy. But the world is more complex than they were capable of realising. Indeed, the world began to reveal its complexities the moment the colonial masters brought down their flags and the nationalists hoisted theirs. Yet the nationalists convinced themselves, and justifiably so, that true decolonisation had just begun. They would not be free until they achieved complete decolonisation. But since complete decolonisation is a vague term, the new country is left to the mercy of the nationalists’ interpretation.
