Summary: “Privacy is a myth believed by the uninitiated.”

Is anyone free on planet earth?

My penetrating article on the subject, "Is Africa Free?" must wait, while I devote keen attention to a relevant issue affecting our little race.

Our hearts palpitate with an idea that we are free people, and this does not even broach the lifelong conundrum of the debate: Are we free or determined? The pellucid focus here is whether we are actually free from overt and covert eyes that perennially trail our shadows and lineaments.

Today, there are still some who maintain a granite belief in the shifting illusion called privacy. As it is, time and again, news stories raze down what seemed to be impermeable personal castles, jolting the average person in the process. And thus, without gibbering in circles, I will posit a pithy and poignant belief: Watchmen have bought the "right" to watch over us—without our co-operation!

Indeed, through a medley of sophisticated contrivances and old-fashioned techniques, they have, and will conspire to constantly monitor us from our cradle till we cross over and join Erebus's cart through chthonic realms.

Whether we are in the supposed privacy of our homes chatting on phone, somebody is grading our conversation. Or, browsing the internet, some uninvited person follows every keystroke all the way through. Out there in the streets, there are CCTVs monitoring our every move. Even our postage does not escape; not to mention whether the people we meet (online or offline) are who they pretend to be. In fact, we are under incessant surveillance throughout our breathing lives. Modern practicalities have seen us sold to others who know where we live, what we drink, eat, say, and even wear. In effect, they know everything about us.

Through an imposed ratiocination, I have dropped the scales and unfurled my belief in privacy, and accepted that we are just never going to be free from monitoring; it is the new form of omnipresent morass we are all stuck in. In fact, there remains a worrying capacity of "buyers" to continue such a peeled eye enterprise.

In my belief, my data has been bought by someone either for legitimate or illegitimate purposes. And while I am not comfortable with it, I know this is the modern world that civilisation has supposedly carved for us. Some will belligerently contest such monitoring, as tenacious libertarians like to, and even the masses may be promised a modicum of sanity through passed laws; but as to whether the laws work as well as purported, is beyond the circumference of our concentration.

The long procession of "buyers" who with equal skill and guile keep the vehicle of monitoring chugging along, include those who report, those who accumulate, those who analyse, and even those who pass judgement or take action; all these and more are right next to us, even when we believe we are outside their inexhaustible perimeter. In light of the foregoing, when I hear the word privacy, it bestirs a blast of guffaw from my inner recesses. Yes, I chortle, as in my view, there is no such thing as privacy. Or, is there?

For one thing, it is certain that those who assume a cloak of necessity, and are emboldened by intriguing state machinery, and in turn employ intrusive investigative methods to eavesdrop, will justify their intelligence gathering as being for the prevention or countering of espionage, crime, terrorism and sabotage, from the activities of agents of foreign powers, and from actions intended to overthrow or undermine parliamentary democracy by political, industrial or violent means. Contrarily, it is equally obvious that the same mechanisms aid criminal organisations to plan and commit crimes such as robbery and kidnapping; so do businesses to gather intelligence, as well as private investigators, for their moot purposes.

It is a futile and wanton waste of valuable time to rage on like a juddering juggernaut about the ethics of such. While I may please many uninitiated folk, I shall persuade none of those who hold the "keys".

Perhaps someone will someday convince me that we are actually free. But, having surveyed the horizon of happenings, on a personal level, I have concluded otherwise, and that privacy is a myth only ignorant people believe they have or enjoy.

Only if some sensible person will believe this reasoned view; perhaps they will save themselves from saying or doing what will only be in the open in a few seconds. On that exalted plane, for example, a story in the Guardian about judges who had watched pornography on their office computers would have been a non-event.

In a true scheme of affairs, the final word on this matter has been wrapped in a timeless truth by One who lived the noblest life, who cautioned: "For there is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; neither hid, that shall not be known. Therefore whatsoever ye have spoken in darkness shall be heard in the light; and that which ye have spoken in the ear in closets shall be proclaimed upon the housetops."

In essence, cautious souls will follow such stainless wisdom, and avoid being caught in a swirl of unnecessary distractions and reputation damage.

I shall return with my talking drums!