Moralists have sought to persuade us that conscience is one of the most powerful agents in human behaviour. Now that reason and pity have agreed to regard hell-fire as a hateful myth, many good people have seen in conscience the chief safeguard that shall induce the human race to walk in the way of righteousness. Shakespeare has told us that conscience makes cowards of us all. Novelists and playwrights have described to us the pangs that assail the wicked, they have vividly pictured the anguish of a stricken conscience and the sleepless nights it occasions. They have shown it poisoning every pleasure till life is so intolerable that discovery and punishment comes as a welcome relief.

Looking at history and the destruction of human life, be it physically, emotionally, psychologically, socially or economically that dictator presidents, apartheid leaders and man like Hitler and Osama Bin Laden caused, I have often wondered if politicians have a conscience. Sometimes  I have often wondered how much of all the talk about conscience is actually true. I understand moralists for making most people believe what they believe about conscience, because I know that moralists have an axe to grind, they must draw a moral. They know that if they say a thing often enough people will believe it. They are apt to state a thing is so when they consider it desirable that it should be so, when it helps people to live a righteous life. They tell us that the wages of sin is death, yet we know very well that it is not always so, otherwise most politicians would have died long back. I also understand the authors of fiction, the novelists, the playwrights and the directors of films for making us believe what we believe about conscience because they have to let an honourable theme come out from their works. When authors of fiction get hold of an effective theme they are disposed to make use of it without bothering very much whether it agrees with the facts of life. As a result certain statements about  human nature become as it were common property and so are accepted as self-evident. In the same way painters for ages painted shadows black, and it was not till the impressionists looked at them with unprejudiced eyes and painted what they saw that we discovered that shadows were coloured. If we look with an unprejudiced eye at the deeds and misdeeds of some politicians and the destruction of lives their actions cause, we too will begin to see conscience with a different viewpoint.

It has sometimes struck me that perhaps conscience is the expression of a high moral development, so that its influence is strong only in those whose virtue is so shining that they are unlikely to commit any action for which they could seriously reproach themselves. It is generally accepted that killing a human being is a shocking crime, and it is the killer above all other criminals who is supposed to suffer the utmost remorse. His victim we have been made to believe, haunts his dreams in horrifying nightmares and the recollection of his dreadful deed tortures his working hours. If this were true how come (to name only a few) Idi Amin, Kamuzu Banda, Pik Botha, Hitler and Osama Bin Laden who ordered the killing of many innocent people did not go insane as the many lives they killed haunted their dreams in horrifying nightmares and tortured their waking hours. How come the men who ordered the Zimbabwe Green Bomber youth militia to go on a killing rampage targeting MDC supporters in the villages after the March 2008 elections are carrying on with life as normal as if they are not being haunted by those they killed. Where will be the conscience of these politicians when they order the killing and torture of people?  If conscience is what we believe it is, then the conclusion we come to is that some politicians have no conscience. What is wrong with voters who vote for politicians who have no conscience into power.?

Our humanity lies in our conscience, it is the moral fibre that is the foundation of a humane society. It is our conscience that sets us apart from other living creatures. Without a conscience humans can become as wild as animals in the jungle and righteousness becomes elusive, an ungraspable illusion. I thank moralists, novelists, playwrights and directors of some films for instilling a good conscience in our lives with the themes of most of their stories and I hate politicians whose actions make us doubt everything that we were made to believe about conscience. Voters in the next elections make sure you vote for the candidate whose actions show that he/she has a conscience that leads him/her to do good for the people all the time.