There are many countries around the world that have corporal punishment prescribed in their statutes. One of those countries that come into mind where this form of punishment has yielded desirable results is Brunei. It is part of their judicial practice to administer the whip on bare buttocks in a private session. This kind of punishment is usually reserved for men and boys.
My recent research on the JCP (Judicial Corporal Punishment) gave me an indication that this type and form of punishment has always existed largely in former British ruled countries and as well as Muslim countries and Brunei fits a perfect description as former British colony and a Muslim country.
Some of us will recall the 1994 world acclaimed case of Michael Fay which occurred in the country of Singapore, a former British colony itself. The case of the youthful Fay brought the matter of JCP to the surface and became a heated topic in public discourse at the time. This became a matter that shook the diplomatic relationship of the United States of America and Singapore to the core as the case at one point involved Bill Clinton who was the president of the US at the time.
Michael Fay was charged with an offence of vandalism to private property and cars in particular and he also went on to steal road signs. The 19 year old juvenile was sentenced to six strokes of the cane. Fay was no ordinary juvenile, he was an American citizen and caning him was something unacceptable by the US government.
This was a case of what I would like to term as a cross-cultural misunderstandings and miscommunication and this occurred throughout the case. It was a matter of one culture coming head on against another. Caning has cultural connotations to it and it may be misleading to think that it was something of a British creation taking into account that the countries that still maintain it were once ruled by the British.
As the days were closing nearer to the moment of truth regarding Fay’s corporal punishment, the White House got involved to try and save this young man from the wrath of the official caner. President Clinton had to fly Air Force One to Singapore to do the bidding for the young Fay to be left off the hook. But the Singapore authorities stood their ground and on the projected day he was caned as planned. The president of the United States and the entire country were infuriated by this “act of barbarism.”
In comparison, there is less crime in Singapore than in the US. Of course there are other factors and many contributory variables to this existing state of affairs. But chief among the factors that are keeping crime so low in this Asian country is the administration of the cane. On the other hand, it shows how offended Americans became when they sent their president to intervene on this matter, it was a clash of cultures.
We have to take a look back at the cited case of Michael Fay and derive lessons from it as a country. We need not be apologetic about the conduct of our culture which allows flogging as a remedy to societal ills. The reason why we are not doing it the way we should be doing it is all because we want to be politically right on the platform of international relations. But the only way out of our dilemma of soaring crime is to bring back the whip.
Botswana should never have given into international pressure by human rights organizations as has been the case with our flogging policy and tradition. We should have turned the pages of history and read the case of Regent Tshekedi Khama Vs Resident Commissioner Colonel Charles Rey. There has been a lot of coverage on this case as it came out to be so politically charged.
Among other literature is a book titled “The Flogging of Phineas McIntosh: A Tale of Colonial Folly and Injustice” by Michael Crowder who has been a history professor at the University of Botswana. Crowder has a great wealth of work on Tshekedi Khama and the author takes particular keen interest on this particular case regarding the flogging of a British citizen who was given punishment for recklessly womanizing in the Ngwato chiefdom..
In another book by the same author, the flogging issue is further discussed in a very interesting fashion. Crowder mentions that even though the British were so incensed by this act of defiance by Tshekedi Khama, the parents of McIntosh had no issues with the punishment. After the cloud had settled on the issue, they visited the regent at his residence to thank him for bringing their son in order.
It is interesting how both governments put immense resources to address the flogging of two wayward youths. The Americans flew their president to Singapore and he went all the way with the White House staff and the secret service that pitched up weeks earlier. With the McIntosh case, the British imperial government mobilised 200 Navy marines from the port of Simons Town in the Cape for a show of force against an African chief.
I draw very close similarities in the two cases of McIntosh and Fay even though they happened sixty one years apart. The bottom line drawn here is that the Westerner always has approached each case with the supra cultural mentality. These events of juvenile delinquency did not happen in a cultural vacuum. They occurred within a setting where flogging was regarded as the ultimate medicine to delinquency.
As a nation, we need to shake ourselves off from our slumber and come to the realization that we are losing it at the expense of not enforcing the whip. Every week there are increasing cases of brazen daring bravery by our youths in the manner in which they have taken up their level of criminality.
