In times of national crisis, history teaches us to look for three pillars of moral authority: the prophet who speaks for justice, the elder statesman who values country above party, and the traditional ruler whose stool is older than the constitution. These are the voices that have pulled nations back from the brink, not with armies or wealth, but with the unvarnished truth. Yet today, as our nation drifts toward dangerous waters, we are met not by courageous voices but by a deafening, almost complicit silence. Where have they gone? And more importantly, why have we stopped demanding their return?
Consider first the prophet. The prophet is not a soothsayer or a fortune-teller; he is a disturber of the peace, a splinter under the fingernail of power. Think of Nathan confronting David over Bathsheba: “You are the man.” Think of John the Baptist losing his head rather than losing his nerve. In our own recent history, think of Archbishop Tutu staring down apartheid, or the lone cleric who stood before a column of tanks. Prophets name the sin in the room when everyone else has agreed to ignore it. But today’s modern-day prophets, mostly self-acclaimed, have been muted, some by fear of arrest under draconian security laws, others by the quiet seduction of presidential access and first-class flights. The few who dare to speak are drowned out by the 24-hour news cycle or dismissed as “political” or “bitter.”Â
When was the last time a religious leader of national standing addressed a sitting president not as “Your Excellency” but as “my son, you have done wrong”? We have plenty of preachers for prosperity, miracle workers who prophesy financial breakthrough for donors, but none for penitence. The prophetic voice has been replaced by the podcast hot take: louder, more frequent, but infinitely less anchored in moral courage. Noise is not truth.
Then there are the elder statesmen. In previous decades, former presidents, retired generals, long-serving ministers, and respected jurists formed an informal council of sobriety. They had nothing left to gain and a legacy to protect. They would issue a statement, carefully worded but unmistakable, that recalibrated the national conversation. Sometimes they would meet privately with a wayward head of state and the meeting itself, once leaked, and was enough to restore a measure of restraint.Â
Today, most elder statesmen have either retired into comfortable oblivion, or worse, become partisan gladiators in civilian clothing, trading wisdom for relevance. The rare exceptions, those who still speak, are met with mockery from the very young and suspicion from the very powerful. Age is no longer venerated as a repository of wisdom; it is weaponized as a sign of obsolescence. Social media tells us that elders are out of touch, yet the same platforms amplify the most reckless voices of the young. But wisdom does not expire, even if courage sometimes does. Where is the retired justice who will remind us that no one is above the law? Where is the former head of state who will say plainly, “I made my own mistakes, but this path we are on is ruin”? They exist. They are simply choosing silence. And silence, in times of tyranny, is a form of consent.
And what of the paramount traditional rulers? In many societies, the royal stool or chieftaincy title is not merely ceremonial. It carries the weight of ancestors and the duty to protect the culture, the land, and the common good. Traditional rulers once acted as buffers between the governed and the governors, speaking truths that no elected official could hear, offering sanctuary to the persecuted, and reminding kings that they too are mortal. Now, too many have been co-opted. They are driven in black SUVs to state banquets, decorated with chieftaincy titles by the very politicians they should hold accountable, and given generous “maintenance allowances” that come with unspoken conditions. Their palaces have become extensions of the campaign trail. The neutral ground of tradition has been paved over with partisan asphalt. A king who dines with power every night cannot be the conscience of power by morning. When a paramount ruler sits silently while his people are harassed or his region is stripped of resources, he ceases to be a ruler and becomes a decoration.
Some will argue that speaking truth to power has become impossible in an age of surveillance, draconian security laws, and social media mobs. That is a confession of cowardice, not a statement of fact. Truth has always been dangerous. The prophets were thrown into wells and stoned. Elder statesmen were placed under house arrest and had their phones tapped. Traditional rulers were exiled or humiliated. But they spoke anyway. Their power was never in their protection but in their principle. The difference today is not the level of danger; it is the level of comfort. We have been pacified by air conditioning, foreign bank accounts, and the illusion that the crisis will somehow not reach our own gates.
The silence we hear today is therefore not a reflection of changed times, but of changed character. We have the leaders we have not because tyrants are smarter, but because the righteous are quieter. We have outsourced moral authority to hashtags and press releases, forgetting that truth requires embodiment, a human voice, unscripted and unafraid, speaking directly to the face of power.
So let the question echo across every palace, every cathedral, and every retired general’s living room: Where are you, prophet of the market square? Where are you, elder who has buried enough friends to stop fearing death? Where are you, royal father whose crown outlasts any president’s term?
Come out of your comfortable silences. The nation does not need another communiqué, another carefully worded statement that condemns no one and changes nothing. It needs a roar. It needs you to speak truth not when it is safe, not when it is popular, but precisely because it is hard. The silence is killing us. Break it.
