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Where we may be wrong

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The proper use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) for the betterment of society is an idea that is little understood by the larger part of the population of Lesotho though many encounter its products on a daily basis; from the use of the telephone, the mobile (cell) phone, the internet, and other messaging systems that electronically transmit vital communication electronically over large distances or globally.

Many are content with the making of a call to a relative or business acquaintance in some other part of the country or the world, but most of those who use the technology never bother to understand the basic components or aspects of the mode of communication that keeps them in touch with the immediate and far parts of the world.
Whether for the making of the private call or for the purpose of broadcasting a message on the various social media platforms, those who use the internet actually do not bother to give care to the content they send or receive on the available telecommunication platforms. This is because many users of telecommunication products and services in Lesotho just use them without question.

For a long time, one as a user of the services and products provided by the leading telecommunications companies in the county often thinks they have every right to say whatever they feel they should without regard to the sensitivity of the information they relay to the general public on the different social media platforms.

Until one was made aware of the fact that some of the products available were there to work fairly for everyone, the customer or user that just bursts out about any issue without prior regard to the sensitivity of what they are relaying stands to misinform the citizenry and mislead them.
Telecommunication technology establishes links between various individuals and serves their interests in a myriad of aspects, that is, the telecommunications company acts as the middleman whose services are largely provided on a prepaid basis, excepting a small portion of the customer base that get their services on a contractual basis.

That a large portion is paying in advance for the services they get logically means they deserve good service from the companies rendering such a service or selling given telecommunications products. If the customers think careless speak equals their money’s worth, then it is a disservice to the service provider whose sole aim is to provide adequate infrastructure to enable communication between individuals and institutional authorities.
A 1990 ITU (International Telecommunication Union) study of telecommunications and development, The Missing Link, concluded that:

Telecommunications can increase the efficiency of economic, commercial, and administrative activities, improve the effectiveness of social and emergency services and distribute the social, cultural and economic benefits of the process of development more equitably throughout the country…

This quote clearly presents the significance of telecommunications in development and, one could assume that the bodies concerned with implementing infrastructures related to communication do consider such issues as the satisfaction of the customer that uses telecommunication products.

To one’s disappointment, it is usually the careless customer that does not have any sense or concern for the rights of other customers who use the services of the providers. An example one can make is the increasing amount of false news on the internet that has seen a steady increase in the last 10 years in more progressive countries and is steadily increasing in the developing world.

If one connects to the net using their dongle, tablet, or PC, one should ensure that what they do or say on the web does not do a disservice to other users on the World Wide Web. The downloading or uploading of material means that the user should more often than less do so with the rights of other users in mind.

One should always be aware of the new reality that even minors can now gain access to such simple things as video files on the web and that those things they come across on the web have a direct influence on their developing characters.
It leaves one frustrated by the fact that the necessary basics that are needed to ensure harmonious living in society are not given due consideration by many of our social media users.

I personally feel cheated by the fact that more often than less, some the users of the social media platforms do not seem to give prior care with the use of their words and the content that they upload for consumption by other users. The problem is not that we do not use the platforms most of time, the problem is that the element of respect seems nonexistent in that type of user that sometimes distributes pornographic content or sensitive information without consideration to its effect on social harmony.

It has occurred on many occasions that I come across inappropriate content when I conduct research and this ends up proving irrelevant to my research because such content literally floods the internet. Personal research has revealed that many of the people conducting research on the net face the same problems of coming across inappropriate and irrelevant content shared by inconsiderate users.

Many have complained but the best they get is a polite answer, or being forced to haul their machines to the customer care centre for inquiries on the type of content they find when surfing the net on the phone, because the poor service providers do not know how to deal with brigand users.
This is common, one may say, but the question remains; how can we progress and match the rest of the world when we have poor understanding the proper use of telecommunications services? Many of those countries we want to match are light years ahead because their internet or social media users have healthy habits, and the countries’ economies thus progress.

At the rate at which our telecommunication services users are progressing in terms of understanding on the use of communication platforms, even those cavemen from the stone age will soon be ahead of us.

A paper I recently read states:
The Central Bank of Lesotho’s March 2009 Report of the Lesotho Communications Authority (LCA), Information and Communications Technology (ICT) activities and products have been found to be fundamental catalysts of economic growth and development.

Economic growth and development is not a one way street; there are two players in it: the consumer (customer) and the service provider (producer). If one of the two parties does not practice fairly and leaves the other dissatisfied, then economic growth and development suffer because one of the two does not operate at required levels.
Simply put, if I as a customer do not use a service provided appropriately, then it defeats the intention of the provider which is to furnish me with the platform which I need for communication.

In the end it negatively affects me as the customer and hampers the provider’s ability to improve services because they have to focus on dealing with rogue elements spreading misinformation instead of adding other useful services.
There are productive activities that one can engage in on the web to bring in needed money, but the lead preoccupation for a certain section of society seems to be the spreading of false news and inappropriate material on the available media platforms. The service providers try hard to improve on the products they sell to the consumers, but honestly speaking, the reality of the rogue social-media customer leads to hampering the provider to deliver the quality they promise.
It is a view I share with a small number at the moment, but it can be silenced only if the character of the user becomes a main concern for the service providers in the telecommunications sector. The deeds of these individuals should be met with harsher measures than it is being done at this point in time.

Africa is largely made up of consumer economies as writers including Chika Onyeani (author of The Capitalist Nigger) show in their observations. The continent does not produce what it consumes because most of the products consumed on the market come into the economy as imports from other parts of the world.

This poses a problem because the standards set in relation to the quality of the goods imported are not those of the consumer but the producer. The African consumer does not understand the quality of the goods, does not understand their appropriate use, and therefore ends up misusing them.
This is without question one of the reasons why we spend hard-earned cash on commodities we do not understand. This does not apply only to what we eat, the same habit applies when it comes to social media websites that are being inappropriately used by consumers that do not understand their basic purpose. Chika Onyeani presents the argument that:

The blame game has become a permanent part of our lives to the exclusion of any other solution that could be more viable in solving our problems. It has become the most productive part of our lives, because without it the African cannot really point to much that they are in charge of producing. It is better to blame others than to confront the truth of our being responsible for whatever has happened to us as an African race.

Indeed, we feign ignorance when what we distribute on social media negatively affects others, because we have made a habit of making excuses when we have to own up to our errors of judgement and character. Some of those that spread inappropriate content on social media often claim their accounts were hacked, but the question remains: do they ever report unusual activity on their accounts?

The likely answer in many cases is a clear ‘No’. There are many basic truths about the history of political violence in Africa, many of them are the direct result of colonisation, but the truth of the matter is that a large part of Africa was long ago liberated from the clutches of colonisation; or was it?
I think not because our individual behavioural patterns and character attest to an irresponsible type of regressive attitude that is hinged on rebelling against progress even if it stands to benefit us at the end of the day.

Reliant upon the Good Samaritans for daily living, the African man and woman have somehow lost the simple understanding that taking responsibility is what will actually free them. We should be able to take responsibility for our deeds, and from this sense we shall be able to progress as a continent.

We must be able to effectively use those platforms afforded to us by being responsible instead of using them to prove who the bigger native is.
Some states got their freedom from colonialism more than 50 years ago, but the influence or the influences of colonialism are still in a lot of ways marring the path to the true progress of Africa as a continent. Colonialism is still to blame for the endless civil wars, political instability, and social unrest in Africa.

To one that bothers to ask the simple question; is colonialism really to blame for Africa’s current problems, or, is it just a scapegoat and a lame excuse for poor self-governance and democratic political competence?
The answers to these questions are many, varied and very diverse in their exploration of the true source of Africa’s problems apparently started by ‘colonialism’, I choose to differ in opinion for, many of the political or social problems have their roots in the simple fact that Africa seems to suffer from chronic amnesia, especially in cases where respect and acknowledgement of responsibility are due.

Africa is a continent that does not accept its errors, and this leads to the repetition of the same errors to the point where they hamper the progress of the continent.
Dennis Brutus once penned these words:
the deafening clamor of their prayers
to a deity made in the image of their prejudice
which drowns the voice of conscience,
is mirrored our predicament
but on a social, massive, organized scale
which magnifies enormously
as the private dehabille of love
becomes obscene in orgies.

His words, aimed at Apartheid, are sadly relevant when it comes to this new form of professional Apartheid where some individuals are considered less than their fellows, even where such individuals infringe on the rights of others. Social media websites have become churches where tweets, posts, and uploads have become the daily mantra a significant portion of society follow.

The only problem is that they have led to the proliferation of personal speculation even on issues where such speculation could prove to be harmful to the larger society. We find it even in the midst of the current COVID-19 epidemic, and it could lead to results that are drastic for the rest of our human society.

We need to change our mindset with regard to the way we interact on social media platforms if we are to see to the progress of this world. We are definitely wrong if laymen will be allowed to present their speculations on health matters that could at the end of the day lead to increased cases and deaths from the virus. Watch your words on these social media platforms.

Tšepiso S. Mothibi

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Insight

A fresh chance to do things differently

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“YOU love to look earnest and inform the world that it’s the ‘duty of responsible business men to be strictly moral as an example to the community.’ In fact you’re so earnest about morality, old Georgie, that I hate to think how essentially immoral you must be underneath.” Sinclair Lewis (Babbitt, p. 69, 1922)
Africa is still in a perpetual loop of violence, poverty and ever increasing crime 70 years after its first country attained independence.

“YOU love to look earnest and inform the world that it’s the ‘duty of responsible business men to be strictly moral as an example to the community.’ In fact you’re so earnest about morality, old Georgie, that I hate to think how essentially immoral you must be underneath.” Sinclair Lewis (Babbitt, p. 69, 1922)

Africa is still in a perpetual loop of violence, poverty and ever increasing crime 70 years after its first country attained independence.
Trying to find why, and trying to understand how human beings think, I learnt of one aspect that we often overlook or totally ignore and or maybe consider it as virtue – hypocrisy.
The above quote of Sinclair Lewis made me look at the conduct of our leaders in countries like Zimbabwe and South Africa.

If you want to understand and learn about leaders in these states, look at how Zimbabwean leaders treat their opposition, then listen to them when they tell the world how honest they are.
Look at how South Africa treats tiny Lesotho, then listen to them telling the whole world how honest they are with Lesotho.
Then I followed the Ukraine-Russia war.

February 24, 2022 saw the full invasion of Ukraine by Russia. My man Vladimir Putin nicknamed that invasion of Ukraine a “special operation.”
He paraded a plethora of reasons to invade Ukraine, from insinuating that Ukrainians are killing Russian minorities in Ukraine, to “denazifying” Ukraine and many other senseless reasons to wage a war against a sovereign state.

Russia tried hard to appear sane. The armed forces of Russia made an easy meal out of poorly equipped Ukrainian army at the start of the invasion.
Everyone caught their breath to see how Ukraine would fare against a nuclear armed Russia, equipped with some of the deadliest weapons in the world.
Hypocrites watched as towns and cities were peppered with harvester bombs (cluster type) that killed indiscriminately and as Putin called a maternity ward a legitimate military target.

The famous BRICS stuck their palms between their thighs and perhaps waited to hear their captain (Putin) tell them of the total collapse and capture of Ukraine.
BRICS kept on playing cards and casino when their team member was killing people, just to spite NATO and the Americans. I took a closer look at the BRICS countries, and I am watching them closely.

What kind of order are they dreaming to usher in this world of utmost bloodletting and hypocrisy? My man rained missiles and rockets on Luhansk, Lyiv, Lyman, Mariupol and many other oblasts thereby ruthlessly cutting lives short, and maiming children with utmost bestial brutality.
I strained my ear to listen to how South Africa would act in defence of the old couple who got clobbered with cluster bombs in Luhansk by Putin, what would South Africa say when Ukrainian prisoners of war were mauled without mercy by Russians. Nothing!

I strained to hear South Africa rebuke Russia, and the Foreign Minister with her Model C English was not as harsh as she did later on Israel.
Civilian casualty figures increased. A chilling story of a woman killed while giving birth did not stop Russia howitzers from decapitating old people in their houses, when other women gave birth in the streets in their attempt to flee from Putin’s bombs.

Stories of rapist platoons masquerading as a liberating force did not bring any sense of humanity in Putin or the gracious South Africa to feel pity for a pregnant woman who got smashed by Kinzhal and Kh-22 and all the fancy murderous weapons.

The same rapists who were later copied by Hamas did not get a tongue lashing from South Africa. Ukrainians queuing for bread were butchered in broad daylight, just like Gazans getting medical attention in Gaza being bombed by Israel.
Perhaps to South Africa that was not genocidal.

Scores of Ukrainians, 61 lives to be exact, were snuffed in one second over the Kramatorsk Railway Station where more than 400 people were butchered.
That did not come out as signal of genocide to South Africa’s government.
My man threatened to kill more and even questioned the very existence of Ukraine as a nation state, just like South Africa, albeit tongue in cheek, questions the existence of Lesotho.

Rather South Africa rebuked Russia with its Sunday voice and then stuck its head in the sand as Russian forces committed genocidal massacres in Bucha and other regions.
Ukrainian dogs and cats experienced the wrath of my man, Colonel Vladimir Putin, just like Gazan donkeys and cats suffered at the hands of Israel.
The man I liked and followed closely when I was still in college was slaughtering them.

His concept of denazification of Ukraine is dry balls to me and he should not attempt to come to me with that nonsense.
Maybe South Africa will swallow that.

He lost my confidence when figures of the victims of his relentless missile strikes reached 8 000 dead Ukrainians.
When South Africa hastened to haul Israel before the ICJ for heinous genocidal crimes against the Palestinians, I said: “Oaii!” Russia is literally frying Ukrainians with thermobaric inferno in the broad daylight worse than the Auschwitz ovens.

When will South Africa haul Russia’s scrawny behind before the ICJ too?
Suddenly, I saw the similarity between South Africa and Israel.

South Africa fried Basotho with its banned phosphorous weapons of mass frying in 1998, just what Israel is doing to the Gazans. That’s how hypocrites behave, ask Sinclair Lewis.

The formula is simple, tell the world how good you are and then downplay your cruelty on your neighbour or even threaten anyone who tells the world about your barbarism. Such action made me look thoroughly at the way South Africa treats Basotho.
I saw the mirror reflection of how Israel treats Gaza.

I saw Netanyahu’s extremist desires of exterminating and swallowing Gaza manifest in South Africa. Gaza has fertile land that Netanyahu wants.
Basotho have water in abundance, and other minerals and South Africa is drooling for Basotho’s resources. Gaza is quasi-landlocked with Israel controlling the Gazans sea.

South Africa fully controls what comes into Lesotho and what may come out and even bullies Basotho during important negotiations like the Highlands Water Project.
The same South Africa is today funding sell-out political parties to destabilise Basotho, just like Israel is funding moles to spy on Gazans, just like Russia is steam rolling the Ukrainians.

In Lesotho’s parliament there are turncoat sell-outs, Masehaqheme, sponsored by South Africa, pushing the RSA’s agenda.
The same evil apartheid-inspired treatment of Gazans by Israel is exactly what the hypocritical and hegemonic seeking bully called South Africa is serving Basotho at their borders, much worse than what Malan and Verwoed served Basotho.

What is unnerving is to learn that the existence of Lesotho as a sovereign state is more in peril today than at any time in its stellar history.
It’s at its existential peril much worse than when De Kok and De Klerk were murdering Africans like monkeys and pigs and occupying their lands like Cabinda, Namibia, and Angola.

It came as no surprise when the same monstrous designs of murderous apartheid South Africa were publicly displayed by SANDF in 1998 when they planted the South African flag in Basotho’s holy of holies – The Royal Palace.
Well, even the Satanic apartheid South Africa of Kat Liebenberg and Konstant Viljoen never did that. Israel under Netanyahu has crept into West Bank and nibbled the Palestinians land and is imposing unlawful settlements and the armed settlers planted their Israeli flag in West Bank.

South Africa is doing exactly what Israel is doing by wrenching away part of Basotho’s territory bit-by-bit like part of Tele, Qacha’s Nek and Sani Pass out of Basotho. Yet South Africa has the audacity to tell Israel to stop encroaching on Palestinians land.
Why so?

Because they have the economic muscle and the military muscle as they can snuff Basotho out in less than 30 minutes. To put it mildly, they would do as their apartheid forefathers did, who bred them and left them a thick file of evil they did in 1986 when they simply shut down all the borders with Lesotho.

Besides that, they have shown the world what they are capable of in 1998 when they fired white phosphorus weapons on Basotho killing and roasting many alive. Just like their apartheid bully buddy Israel is roasting Gazans alive with phosphorus chemical weapon of mass extermination.

Gazans are crying for dignity, for food, jobs, medicine, freedom, and for bombs to stop killing babies. Gazans are crying for Israel to lift its blockade, to stop harassing them, and Israel is denying them that.

It is just like Basotho want freedom, their self-determination and their land back from South Africa. They just want to live happily and utilise their resources as they please.
What is intriguingly surprising is to realise that all Islamic and Arab countries did not ponder to take Israel to the ICJ.

Then suddenly, they came to live when a hypocrite called South Africa rushed to the ICJ, yet the same South Africa is strangling the helpless and hapless sovereign state called the Kingdom of Lesotho.

If South Africa is such a country that likes justice, why can’t they just return to Lesotho what rightfully belongs to Basotho?
As recently as 1985, boards with clear inscription that showed which lands were stolen by the Boers and the British that belonged to Moshoeshoe were still visible in South Africa.
Alas! Today the same has been removed by the South Africa of apartheid ANC.

In Lesotho, it serves South Africa right when Basotho elect weak, naive and clueless governments, which they can bully and intimidate with impunity, hence, the recent signing of the water treaty by the current Lesotho government without care of Basotho’s concerns.
Basotho want their land back up to the sea not the paltry 50km wide corridor once mooted by Mandela.

We never ceased to demand our land back, so the UN declaration of 1962 for return of Bechuanaland, Swaziland and Basutoland land came into being late in the struggle for the return of our land.

This includes the OAU 1964 declaration signed by freed subservient slaves that the rest of Africans would not reclaim their lands. Basotho demanded their land back since 1843.
The ANC knows that. Comrade OR Tambo promised us fair discussions.

For Basotho, the 1964 OAU declaration was 125 years late, besides that, Lesotho still lodged their claim with OAU in 1978. OR Tambo respected and understood that.
In 1843, King Moshoeshoe never accepted the stealing of his land. Black southern Africans called agreed in 1912 that the stolen land shall be returned to their rightful owners, yet when they (ANC) came to power in 1994 they threatened Lesotho’s existence. Communist-inspired organisations like the NUM met in 1992, it’s funny and stupid of them to hear miners deceive each other that they could decide the future of a sovereign state.

Lesotho has never at any time been part of a country called Republic of South Africa or a patch work called Union of South Africa.
When South Africa became a conglomerate of stolen lands in 1910, Basotho had already been a nation state since 1829 and were called a nation in 1824 with a successful fusion of various tribes just as America became nation fused of different white European nations that all surrendered their languages, part of their culture and their being to English speaking British bred whites.

Basotho became a nation state 86 years before the slick patches of stolen lands could be sewn together to form a union of hegemonic British and Boer thieves, that is now benefiting the equally hegemonic RSA of ANC.

Today, the liberated souls of black South Africans of uMkhonto we Sizwe have become direct beneficiaries of apartheid thieving machinery that called everyone a kaffiriki. The boss, baas-ANC, is pumping its fist with an air of invincibility and with a mouthful enjoyment of the spoils of evil and satanic apartheid.
Indeed they have no shame in their faces. The Boers’ spirit of brutalising neighbouring states has found a home in the South Africa of ANC as they are now making faces at Botswana for growing their own tomatoes.

The communist-inspired trade unions are spitting at Eswatini for deciding their type of democracy.
Shame on apartheid heirs.

Their behaviour is worse than that of Israel and apartheid of Malan.
Malan and Verwoed did not give a damn how King Sobhuza led his people than the communist-inspired charlatans who claim to be Africans and democrats but are selling-out to their white communist masters.

That’s how a blackman-swartmense thinks and behaves. Oppressed slaves always forget what they fought for once they reach to the top.
Since they have known nothing except a boot on the neck as a method to control dissent, they practice exactly that when they are in power. Now, they have a boot on Lesotho’s neck and yet they have audacity to tell Israel to behave.

Maybe it’s the time for Israel and its friends to tell South Africa to behave.
We as Basotho, with our Lesotho, don’t want to be part of South Africa, full stop!
Respect our self-determination!

What we want is our land back all the way to the sea.
We don’t want even an inch of what doesn’t belong to us.

If anyone wouldn’t want to be part of the greater Lesotho, no problem.
We have enough trucks, tractors and wheelbarrows to help you relocate to your better South Africa. We will do it for free!

Lesiamo Molapo

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Insight

Three Egg Dilemma: Conclusion

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Morojele’s novel has a first-person narrator (or focalizer, as some of us prefer to say nowadays), whose surname is Mohlala; for obvious reasons, and everyone calls him EG. Unlike many of the other characters, he is not absolutely impoverished, as he has a row of rooms he rents out (albeit his tenants hardly ever pay). He has a vegetable garden, and hires a sweet-natured old gardener called Mkhulu. EG says of himself: “I have learnt how to live poor. Eggs and bread, coffee if there is some in the morning, and my main meal in the late afternoon . . . my clothes are oversized. I am gaunt, and my skin hangs off me like washing.” We’re only a few pages into the story before a ghost appears, naked, ashen pale, stinking of death, and sitting on EG’s lap and caressing him.

Soon after this comes the line “The shooting finally began” and an account of the country’s rapacious and negligent political elite. Throughout, the language is quietly, unobtrusively elegant, with a fine precision to passages of visual description (“The low sun is only half revealed behind a purposeless, misfit cloud”). Throughout also, there are injections of wry or whimsical humour. A lamb is heard “bleating C major in the mornings and F minor in the evenings.” One character is “as thin and fragile as a high school test tube.” At school pupils are taught “how to measure circumferences, though regrettably never how to measure circumstances.”

In the first significant plot development since the shooting starts, EG takes in a young female boarder, Puleng. He meets her aunt and younger brother (her mother has gone missing) and it’s decided she will stay with him, as a domestic helper and for companionship. The ghost appears again, provoking the question, is it a harbinger of death? Then Puleng lands a job as a waitress at the smart hotel on the hill, where she is renamed Pearl, as this is easier for her white customers to grasp.

Puleng mourns: “‘I do not ever again want to see people killed. I do not want there to be no work. I do not want that people are getting poorer and poorer by the day.’” Shortly after, EG shouts at an impoverished woman: “Socialism!” but that, alas, is as far as that goes.

On his growing fondness for Puleng EG muses: “how could I love if I have never been loved? My heart is without call or consequence.” And there is the constant reminder of horrors. EG meets a former soldier, dagga-talkative, who recounts his kills, comparing them to the slaughter of a sheep.

The ghost visits for a third time, sitting on EG’s chest while he’s in bed and swallowing bits of its own flesh as they drop off. Then a massive upset, as local gangsters, led by a thug called Zuluboy, raid the shop / shebeen where a lot of the novel’s action takes place and murder the owner’s son. I’m not going to tell you any more, as I don’t want to commit a spoiler: just to say that there’s a deepening crisis in the personal lives of the main characters and at the national level, until the neighbouring country intervenes. And that the ghost continues to manifest itself.

Just two small quibbles regarding this wonderful novel. Towards the end, Puleng takes over from EG as narrator, and the transition isn’t clearly signalled, so it’s at first confusing. Second, there’s that title. One can, I think, argue that it’s a little flippant, given the novel’s deep and urgent seriousness.

I’ll finish by commenting on the ghost, and may go a bit off the rails here, because I’m not going to resist my ever-present temptation to talk about Dickens.

When interviewed by the Johannesburg Review of Books Morojele said the ghost’s multiple appearances acted as “a prop. It became something I could bounce ideas off and write activities around.” Now, as my readers should be aware, in Dickens’s A Christmas Carol there are four ghosts who appear at intervals: the ghost of Marley and the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future. As a fine BBC television film about Dickens, The Man Who Invented Christmas, makes clear, for Dickens these ghosts performed the same inspirational function as they did for Morojele.

One final point. One of Dickens’s characteristics is to fly off into an incandescent rage, and it’s one of the qualities I love him for. This happens in A Christmas Carol when one of the ghosts shows Scrooge two desperate street kids called Want and Pestilence. And there’s that notorious passage in Bleak House where Dickens yells at the English governing class that if they don’t reform they will bring down on themselves “bloody revolution” and that he will be “the first to applaud.” But there are other ways of doing things and one of the most remarkable qualities of Morojele’s novel is that, despite its urgent and harrowing subject-matter, the narration is so calm and collected.

Three Egg Dilemma is published by the fine South African press Jacana and so should not be too expensive in Lesotho. I do urge all my readers who can to get hold of it. I promise, you won’t regret it, even if it means, following the purchase, a few one-egg meals.

Chris Dunton is a former Professor of English and Dean of Humanities at the National University of Lesotho.

 

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A fresh chance to do things differently

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Where ages of nations are concerned, a nation that is 200 years old is quite young — a nipper. In our case, we still have alive among us loved ones who are over a hundred years old. They have lived longer than half of the time that we have been a nation.
One could even tamper our claim to being 200 years old by suggesting that for 98 years of the past 200 years, our sovereignty was exercised elsewhere, and not by us. It means that in that time, our destiny — political, socio-economic, etc — was not in our hands. Were we to deduct those 98 years from our age, our nationhood would be barely over a century old this year.

Anyhow, whichever way we look at our age as a nation, we are definitely not an old nation where bad systems and bad cultures have become entrenched, and no longer capable of being jettisoned, or replaced. And, with our sovereignty now in our hands, one of the advantages of being a young nation is that it is within our will and power to give shape and character to a political system that can work; and create an inclusive socio-economic order that leaves no one outside.

With regard to the political system, it is clear that, in talks about how Basotho should rule themselves after gaining independence, the British gave Basotho political elites two options. One option was to establish chiefly rule; and the other was to establish a system of rule by elected representatives.

The British themselves did not favour chiefly rule. Neither did Basotho political elites want chiefly rule. Their organisations had started their opposition to it less than 40 years into colonial rule. British negotiators’ purpose of proposing chiefly rule as an option was to threaten Basotho political elites and sway them towards choosing the option of liberal democracy and a government by elected representatives.

Give these circumstances, the outcome of negotiations over how Basotho should rule themselves after they gained independence was a foregone conclusion: establishment of a parliament made up of elected representatives who elect a small group from among themselves to manage public affairs.

It can, therefore, be said that the British did not give Basotho enough options of a system by which they would rule themselves in the post-colonial era. For their part, Basotho political elites accepted liberal democracy not because it was appropriate and suitable for Basotho society but because the system promised to close the chiefs out of power and leave it in the hands of elected political elites.

It remains an interesting question just what system of rule Basotho political elites could have come up with if the British had not forced them to choose between chiefly rule, on the one hand, and liberal democracy, on the other.

Looking at our situation today, it is arguable that the system that could have worked better, and one which our political leaders should have chosen, is one where we took melamu against, and for, one another — re nkelaneng melamu — to get public institutions (including parliament) to work as society want, and to secure a desirable public service on all fronts.

This is because processes and institutions of liberal democracy that Basotho political elites chose fail the public every day, and have not improved in the last 58 years; and those who manage institutions abuse their power at the expense of the public. Society is completely helpless because, for several reasons, seeking redress against bad public service is a complete non-starter.

A lot of this has to do with the nature of political leadership. In politicians who came to dominate Lesotho politics, especially after 1998, we have had politicians who are less inclined to protect society from weaknesses of liberal democracy. Instead, they spend more time working out how such weaknesses can benefit them as a group and as individuals.

Thus, by their actions, Lesotho’s political elites of recent years have made it impossible for liberal democracy to take root in the country. Instead of abiding by the written and unwritten rules of the system, they have perverted it into a tool by which to close society from power.

They have sabotaged processes and workings of liberal institutions; and made it impossible for the system to settle and establish itself firmly in society. They do this by means including exploiting weaknesses of the system to introduce and implement anti-democratic measures designed to remove power from society into their own hands to use against society, and for their own benefit.

A good example of this is the anti-democratic and deeply-hated Ninth Amendment of Lesotho’s Constitution. The courts have now declared it to be unconstitutional and anti-democratic. The Amendment should be allowed to die instead of the courts’ decision being taken on appeal.

It is one advantage of being a young nation that we have an opportunity to establish a system of rule that would leave meaningful power in the hands of society and ensure a distribution of wealth that we want.

In social development, it seems that in government circles the meaning of the phrase ‘social development’ has come to be limited to ‘caring for the elderly, orphans, and the needy’. These are undoubtedly noble activities but a lot more should be expected of a government department of that name. The tasks should include attempts to give society a shape, character and essence we wish it to have.

As at present, it is clear that, among Basotho, anti-social characters of individualism and self-centredness have replaced social values of empathy, and abilities to think of, and care for, one another. Cultivation of these anti-social values and characters takes place at schools where kids are encouraged to admire and value personal wealth, and to be competitive in their pursuit for it. Results of this kind socialisation include perpetration of different forms of crime against society.

This area of cultivating of social values is one of the areas that our attempts at ‘social development’ should aim to focus on, taking advantage of our youthfulness as a nation. Rewards of getting this right include not only a society averse to crime but also a happier society.

Finally, were we to start afresh processes of establishing Lesotho’s system of distributing of wealth, one approach would be to start with an assertion that we want a socio-economic system that distributes wealth fairly; where workers get fair living wages; where the unemployed receive income; where the state looks after the needy, orphaned, old aged (by governments’ own admission, the current social welfare system is leaky, and leaves out more people than it reaches); where people with disabilities are cared for; where children do not go to bed hungry; where children are not reduced to begging; where talents do not go to waste; and where healthcare and education are good quality and totally free.

Again, our youthfulness as a nation gives us an opportunity to come up with a fairer system of distributing wealth. We need to shed the current unwanted honour of Basotho being one of the most unequal societies in the world. We are one of the most unequal societies in the world because of the system of distributing wealth that we have chosen. It can be changed.

We have spent the past 30 years trying to reform liberal democracy and its institutions to suit our politicians. We continue to do so. Despite all efforts and costs, socio-economic inequality has deepened: the wealth of the few well-off has increased while the poverty of the majority of the poor has also increased.

The majority of Basotho have seen and felt only worsening quality of their lives. It might be being a young nation gives us an opportunity to do things differently.

Prof Motlatsi Thabane

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