The pillars of power
If his/her power is not based on the consent of the people, a ruler will fall back on using the Three Bs; Bribery, Blackmail and Bullying, usually in that order.
Black News 
It’s not only dictators who took power in a coup who use these tricks. In almost any country, a lot of candidates run their electoral campaign on promises to give voters something or to do what voters want; repair roads or drainage, cut school or hospital fees; the list is nearly endless.
Some of these examples are so obviously benefitting the community that they are hardly considered to be bribery. Real bribery is a bit more selfish than that; cash in hand for promising to vote for the candidate, for example. We all remember when a candidate in Matebeleland gave a lot of cheques to voters who promised to vote for him only for them to discover, when he did not win, that their cheques were post-dated and had been cancelled. Then there are those who were offered jobs well above their ability; once they get used to the northern suburbs lifestyle they will do almost anything to keep it.
We have seen a lot worse since then; MPs being given cars for supporting a policy they claimed to oppose, Ministers given farms, and so on. At that stage a country is on a slippery slope. We are already on that slippery slope, through police and judges taking bribes to ease the way for those MPs and others to get away with other crimes; the next stage is blackmail.
Anyone standing for political office who is not already corrupt should ask themselves whether there is anything in their lives, right back to childhood, that they wold not want the world to know. If there is, assume that somene will find it out. Continuing to hide it makes you vulnerable to blackmail. It will come out. If you are afraid of that, you can be blackmailed. If you are not squeaky clean, it would be better to admit past mistakes, sins or crimes before an enemy threatens to publish your secret unless you give in to him. We can all name names, of the man who murdered his wife’s boyfriend, or the one who was caught with a human head in the boot of his car: we remember how that advanced their political careers. ZANU like members who never, never question the leadership.
A variant on the theme is to stage “accidents” in which the person they want to influence escapes narrowly or some which mean the death of someone close to that person. That isn’t blackmail, it is a very nasty kind of bullying, one which gains them silence from some of the most principled people. Can you blame anyone who suffers this tactic and retires from public life?
The more open kind of bullying is more common, involving arrest without charge and years of waiting to hear what you are charged with. Or the people who should be protecting us get to use baton sticks, teargas or arson very freely. That’s all designed to make the ordinary citizen very careful to avoid provoking them,
But there is good news. The bully is a coward. If you simply refuse to do what he wants, he will back down. We have seen this at the highest level in our own country and on the international scene. International affairs are so scary these days because the Big Bully in the White House so often threatens to send people to Hell, then changes his mind when they don’t give in.
