Macbeth & Mugabe‘s tragic flaw

Living Large, with Charmain Naidoo

HISTORIAN and moralist Lord John Emerich Acton famously said: “Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.” We‘ve all heard the phrase, but few of us are familiar with the follow-on lines of his quote: “Great men are almost always bad men.”

It‘s a sweeping statement that boggles the mind until you examine great men and their propensity for badness.

There are enough examples of great men behaving badly in history, literature, religion, business. And in politics.

Here are just a handful of some evil leaders who have been responsible for the slaughter of millions: Hitler, Pol Pot, Stalin, Attila the Hun, Idi Amin, Mao Tse Tung. (Drumroll) ... And our own Robert Mugabe. Tada!

The terrible thing about great bad men is that they‘re probably kind to dogs, loved by their mothers and have an appreciation of a fine claret or an exquisite work of art.

That‘s the thing about villainous men: they don‘t have “World‘s most evil person” tattooed to their forehead so it takes a while to identify them as truly wicked, heinous sorts.

Then that one tragic flaw begins to manifest itself, and the great bad man inside the corrupt powerful man begins to emerge, and it‘s like biting into an apple and finding half a worm in the piece you‘re holding in your hand ... how could you have known before you took that mouthful? The apple looked so ripe, red, juicy. Who knew it was rotten to the core?

For me, Shakespeare best identified the tragic flaw and painted his characters with such skill that we empathised with them, cried with them, raged with them and then watched as the body count piled up at the end of the play. The stage is littered with corpses at the end of a Shakespearean tragedy, and for a reason: the tragic hero dies as a result of his tragic flaw.

It‘s supposed to be the lesson for us to behave, the moral in the tale ...

The mighty Moor, Othello, is to all intents and purposes a great soldier whose prowess in battle is unparalleled. But what gets him in the end? Jealousy. It so twists him out of shape that at the end we are relieved that death brings him some peace.

King Lear‘s egotism is his fatal flaw as he makes his property distribution decision based on fake flattery from his daughters Regan and Goneril, cutting off his youngest daughter Cordelia. We watch as he‘s driven mad by his choice.

Hamlet is hell bent on vengeance, the need to avenge his dead father, murdered by his mother and his uncle, the dead king‘s brother. It consumes him so fully that he is a man obsessed. Finally it tips him over the edge and there‘s a bloody end.

And then there‘s literature‘s best known tragic anti-hero: Macbeth. Apart from a fatal error in his choice of a ruthless wife, Macbeth‘s obsession with absolute power sees him done in at the end of a play that starts with witchcraft and prophesy.

Notice the parallels between Macbeth and Mugabe?

Absolute power corrupted them both, absolutely.

They both have ambitious wives who lust after status and position, and who push their men into darker, dirtier deeds.

A chat between the wicked step-sisters might go like this: Lady M: “Girl, watch out for witches. They plotted my poor Scottish husband‘s downfall.”

Mrs M: “Hmm. Witches from your part of the world, Britain, are trying to ruin my husband.”

Lady M (sighing): “It will all end in death, you know.”

Mrs M (smirk): “It already has. We‘ve killed millions.”

Opinion