What on earth is an illegal contraband?

In a June 25 caption, the Nation informed us as follows: “Inspector-General of Police Joseph Boinnet holds a … sack of illegal contraband sugar on display at the Directorate of Criminal Investigations …” The question is: What on earth is “illegal contraband”? I ask because, whether a commodity or only an idea, a contraband is already an illegal commodity.

Indeed, for such a thing to exist, there must first exist its positive counterpart, namely, a “legal contraband”.

That, however, is an impossible self-contradiction. Language, then, was the problem besetting those who handled the caption — namely, those who drafted, edited, passed and even proof-read it.

For, quite clearly, the words “illegal contraband” are an impossible thought self-contradiction. Why? Because, for one thing only, the words “illegal contraband” imply the existence of “legal contraband”.

ILLEGAL

For the word contraband already contains in its meaning the information that whatever it may be referring to is an illegal item.

Yes, whether material or only ideal, a contraband is an illegal commodity. In our country, “ideal contrabands” — namely, bans which affect only a certain set of ideas — include one on a certain set of ideas that originated in a European country called Germany in the 19th-century.

But, to reiterate, nothing can be seen as legal (or legitimate) after it has officially been declared a contraband. In a word, a contraband is a material, even if it exists only in the mind, which the Government has declared illegal.

CONTRABAND

A contraband, then, is an illegal commodity, whether material or merely ideal. In other words, the word contraband refers to any commodity or teaching that a country’s powers-that-be may think is dangerous to their security.

The powers-that-be are, by the very nature of their social position, so lily-livered that they will quickly declare illegal any new thought system and any movement or organisation that may express such thoughts.

Yet contra, the Euro-Mediterranean element of the word contraband, simply means “against” or “contrary to”.

As a form of opposition to the powers-that-be, it is a mere implication. We find contra in such innocuous English words as contrary (“against”) and contradict (“speak against”, “utter the opposite”).

It is in that way that a commodity or idea can also officially be declared a contra-band.

That is to say the powers-that-be may consider it so dangerous to their security or to their personal wealth as to proceed to declare such an idea illegal and even slap a ban on its authors and preachers, nay, even hurl them into jail.

LILY-LIVERED FEAR

Many important prohibitions by Third World states are based on nothing but lily-livered fear of unusual systematic thoughts of that kind.

For example, Euro-North America’s intricate heavenly ideas that today sit so pretty in control of the official mind practically the whole world over, was once upon a time, for a very protracted period, the target of lethal weapons by official Palestinian, official European and official North American thought police, namely, in education and, indeed, even of government.

Philip Ochieng is a journalist. [email protected]