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Muckraker

Kung Fu in Mafeteng, slumber in America

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HERE is something stolen to tickle you into this long weekend that Muckraker hopes will be a wet one.
Young Thabo bought a donkey from a farmer for M5 000.
The farmer agreed to deliver the donkey the next day. The next day the farmer comes to Thabo and says: “Sorry son, but the donkey died”.
“Well, then just give me my money back,” Thabo replied.
“I can’t do that, I’ve already spent it,” said the farmer.
Thabo scratched his head a little bit and said: “OK, then, just bring me the dead donkey”.

Farmer: “What are you going to do with him?”
“I’m going to raffle him off,” Thabo said.
Farmer: “You can’t raffle a dead donkey!”
Thabo: “Sure, I can. Watch me. I just won’t tell anybody the donkey is dead”.
A month later the farmer meets Thabo and asks what happened to the dead donkey.
“I raffled him off. I sold 500 tickets at M20 each and made M9 980,” Thabo said.
Farmer: “And didn’t anyone complain?”
Thabo: “Yes but it was just the guy who won. So I gave him his M20 back.”

That, dear reader, is how the world works. Only the shrewd and the scheming can make it in this jungle. It therefore bothers Muckraker that Lesotho’s politicians don’t think like Thabo.
Instead of finding ways to outwit opponents with smarts they resort to thuggish behaviour that only makes them look like uncouth characters.
Others might put that down to their obvious intellectual malnourishment but books and school have nothing to do with it.

Muckraker thought of Thabo’s story when she heard how Sister Rantšo of the Rehashed Congress of Lesotho (RCL) stormed her party’s conference holding a molamu after some people tried to pull a fast one on her.
Let that sink in. Rantšo was holding a molamu. Yes, Rantšo! That one! You know her.
She was brandishing a molamu while bellowing at party members she accused of plotting to shove her out of the party she formed.
In a way you could say she is justified to have threatened to clobber the delegates. After all, she formed the party and they joined. Now they are booting her out of her own party.

And it’s not as if Rantšo was making idle threats. The conference was being held in Mafeteng, her neighborhood. The people there might have rejected her in elections but they know that she is a daughter of the soil.
So it’s plausible that the Mafeteng people would have pummeled anyone who dared raise a finger against Sister Rantšo. She would not have been so brazen if the gathering was in Maseru.
The only trouble is that her stature does not allow her to descend to such gutter levels.

It wasn’t long before news of her molamu-totting performance were making waves in the media.
In the end it is her reputation that has grease. Those plotting to end her political career are now portrayed as victims of an ill-tempered politician refusing to say “goodbye” even when her party wants her out.
Sister Rantšo has therefore lost the propaganda war.
Wherever she goes people will imagine her kicking a door and storming into a conference hall, while waving a molamu. Muckraker can imagine the drama that would have ensued if someone had challenged her to a fight. There is no doubt that Rantšo would have won that contest.
Remember this is Sister Rantšo we are talking about. Yes, Sister Rantšo! That one!

Muckraker has long accepted that Africans are masters of witchcraft. There are tales of sorcerers who can strike you with lightning, make your privates disappear and send you to your ancestors.
But the real witchcraft in Africa is what its leaders are doing to their own people.

Last week nearly all of them trooped to the United Nations’ General Assembly in America (yes, its called America and anyone who calls it the United States of America has never been there).
Most African leaders took bloated entourages to the annual shindig. One African leader brought 200 people. Another had 100.
One entourage had people brought to carry bags for their leaders. Another had spectators.

It’s possible that some leaders even brought barbers and make-up artists to trim their kinky hair and paint their old faces.
Uncle Tom carried 30 people, including two officials who we were told were going to iron clothes and cook papa ka lepu. Yet all this would not be a disaster if America was a bus trip away.

But there were expensive First and Business Class tickets involved. Uncle Tom’s entourage could have easily cost the country more than M5 million. But that too would not be an issue if this was money well-spent.
The trouble is that African leaders were largely ignored at the meeting. Most addressed empty chairs after delegates went out to spend time on more profitable business than hearing some African leaders waffling about nonsense and complaining about being excluded from the high table.
Watching our leaders, Muckraker wondered why they bother to attend the event when it is as naked as a pig’s behind that no one gives a rat’s what they say.

Perhaps there are better ways to deliver the speeches than flying half-way across the world to be handed a cold shoulder by people who think you are just a bunch of losers angling for donations.
Muckraker suggests that the African leaders form a WhatsApp group on which to share their speeches from the comfort of their homes. That way they don’t have to drain resources from their wretchedly poor countries. They can then simply forward the speeches to the UN secretariat and hope that one of the world leaders will stumble upon one or two of their speeches.

If the African leaders are too old for WhatsApp, they can simply compile their speeches, print them and dispatch them to America. The idea is to get their old and tired messages across.
Because most of them are known to be terrible readers, sending a brochure of their speeches might reach a bigger audience than speaking at the event. Muckraker can hear some African First Ladies cursing her for being too clever for nothing.
Shhhhh Sisters! Your shopping addiction is well-documented but have mercy on the suffering povo.

Nka! Ichuuuuuuuuuuu!

muckraker.post@gmail.com

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Muckraker

Maretlane’s dish rubbish

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Muckraker is still recovering from the Moshoeshoe Walk but her fatigue has nothing to do with the 116km she endured. The walk in the mountains – far from the rascals, perverts, thieves and pretenders of Maseru – was fun.

The pain in her muscles was inflicted by the epic incompetence she witnessed over the three-day walk. Someone should tell Thabo Maretlane to either shape up or ship out.

They say it takes at least 10 000 hours to master a skill. Maretlane has been managing the walk for 17 years but has been consistently doing a shoddy job of it. He is dependable like that.

He has one year to organise the three-day event but for some reason, only known to him, he still botches it every time.

This year he bungled spectacularly. It was as if he had spent the past 16 years mastering the art of mismanagement. By the time this year’s walk started, he was ready to deliver some top-notch shit show.

Oh shame! He brought his ‘A’ game to the mountains and stole the show while the world watched. It was a fantastic display of incompetence. 

The kind that leaves you dazed. He pushed the frontiers of mediocrity. 

Even he could not believe he was capable of sinking to such levels. 

Maretlane started dishing it out from day one. Breakfast was a croissant, a small yoghurt and a piece of dry cheese. And that was it. Off you go into the mountains, he said. 

After a few kilometres hikers were stopped for some speeches from dignitaries. 

And so they waited, waited and waited. There is nothing wrong with some delays. 

But it’s bad manners to park people in the scorching sun for hours without any explanation or apology.

Maretlane and his people were behaving as if the tortuous wait was part of the schedule. 

Yet it wasn’t the lack of communication or the roasting that got Muckraker’s goat. 

Ladies who wanted to relieve themselves had to find some hiding spot in the veld because Maretlane didn’t find it reasonable to provide mobile toilets. When nature called they had to visit a gulley or squat behind a rock. There were not many rocks big enough to cover both the face and the big bums. 

If too scared to use the gully or rock you had to ask friends to shield you from the crowd. 

And that was the source of Muckraker’s irritation. Maretlane forced Muckraker and her friends to be toilet walls. That humiliation of having to invite a congregation to a peeing session would persist for the next three days Maretlane unashamedly basked in the glory of having done something as part of our 200th Anniversary. Water was brought in lituntoana so Maretlane could be amused as we behaved like cattle at a watering hole.

Maretlane didn’t seem bothered because he was on a mission to make the most from the least effort. He had promised water and had delivered. 

 If you didn’t like how it was delivered you could tell it to the mountains or go hang. 

March on, this is not your mother’s house. Drink up and move it, lunch awaits across the mountains. After they finally dragged themselves to the lunch venue, they came face to face with the stinker Maretlane had been cooking while they dragged through mountains and valleys. 

Lunch was something that tasted like chicken but could have been easily mistaken for some newly invented type of rubber. It came with five chips, a piece of bread as hard as Weetbix and a salad that looked like it was about to pinch your nose. It was vulgar. 

Next was some fish smaller than the lemon that was supposed to season it. 

It was served with a sandwich that looked like some leftovers from last year’s walk.

The five chips and the threatening salad were there again, warning you against eating them. 

They were back again when Maretlane unveiled the foul-tasting hot dog.  

It was khemere all the way. By the way, there is nothing traditional, organic or healthy about that drink. The salt on the wound is that hikers paid M1 000 for those meals. The message was clear: we make you pay through the nose for kaka and then make you kaka in the bushes. Come again next year for Maretlane will do you dirty again!

Don’t expect Maretlane to have learned anything from that episode. 

He hasn’t learned in 17 years. 

Don’t try telling him anything. He is now too busy preparing to deliver another scandalously shoddy show next year. Muckraker will not be paying to be abused again. Never! 

Maretlane has eaten enough from her. It will take her months to relearn how to use a toilet again.

Nka! Ichuuuuuuuuuuuu
muckracker.post@gmail.com

 

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Muckraker

The market of rascals

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THE Market’s management is either high on something illegal or just reckless.
They could also be either proudly incompetent or simply daft.
Muckraker suspects they are high, reckless, incompetent and daft.
That is a heavy burden to carry but self-inflicted and deserved.

Their job is to feed tummies and quench thirsts but they believe they are capable of many jobs. In addition to cooking chickin, they fancy themselves to be detectives, expert witnesses, rape experts, psychologists, communication gurus, criminologists, prosecutors, CCTV analysts and many other things they conjure up in their small minds.
That much is lavishly clear from their crude statement reacting to a woman who alleges she was raped in their toilet last week.
Instead of just acknowledging the alleged incident, The Market was sweating to testify, analyse evidence, scrutinise footage and play judge.
They tell us the alleged victim arrived at the restaurant “heavily intoxicated” as if they had measured the alcohol content in her blood.
They say she had left an “unpaid bill” at another restaurant as if they were the Small Claims Court.
They claim CCTV footage shows the victim coming out of the toilets holding hands with her alleged attacker as if they are certain that the handholding was consensual and not one dragging the other. Make no mistake about the sinister motive behind those salacious details sprinkled all over the statement.
They were gathering wood for a pyre to burn the woman and her allegations.
Their demented reasoning is something like this: she could not have been raped because she was intoxicated, absconded her bill down the street and was holding hands with the alleged attacker. None of those things have been proven and they might be just shameless lies told by uncouth characters.
The point, accepted by everyone else except some nincompoops, is that The Market should not have mentioned anything about a bill or intoxication. They are not just trivialising her serious allegations but also calling her a drunk who dodges bills and lies about being raped.
They do this by telling what they believe to be a cogent tale to illustrate that her story is incredible.
Muckraker read that clumsy statement several times and each time she was further disgusted by both the writer and The Market as a business.
They say the gentleman from another restaurant who is “well known to The Market staff” claimed that the woman had left an unpaid bill. That is not some random anecdote but an attempt to justify why they allowed him into the bar after they had closed.
It could also be a flimsy attempt at saying the man could not have violated the woman because he is “well known” to them.
As soon as the narration started Muckraker knew The Market was on an evil path.
And boy, did they march with vigour.
They say while the two were discussing the unpaid bill, the victim “indicated that she needed the bathroom”. Then comes the killer line in the statement: “Moments later, the said gentleman also walked to the bathroom, where after a while they both emerged holding hands”.
The public is invited to conclude that the discussion about the unpaid bill was resolved in the toilet and the two “emerged holding hands”.
In other words, whatever was said or happened in the toilet was so mutual that a debt was settled and hands were held.
The victim blaming and bashing could have ended there but The Market was just getting started.
After social media clobbered them for their callous and inept statement, The Market came back with a second one pretending to be correcting the first one.
This time they tried to sanitise the first statement by weeding out the offensive parts but avoided withdrawing the first statement and sincerely apologising to the woman.
They forget that people will never unlearn what they learned from the first statement and are most likely to read the second statement as an update rather than a correction.
But just like that, The Market thinks they have dodged the bullet so they can go back to their cooking and notorious upselling.
Their message to women is stinging: “It’s your funeral if you run away from a bill and get raped in our toilets. We will protect ourselves and the suspects at all costs. For good measure, we will tell the public you enjoyed free drinks and got so drunk that you made allegations of rape against our friend who was only trying to get you to pay”.
Muckraker will not speculate on what happened but can say, without fear or favour, that The Market’s management are unmitigated and unrepentant rascals. Only a business managed by accredited scoundrels reacts with such brazen thuggery to allegations of rape on its premises. Muckraker didn’t say CHE accredits scoundrels but that the mischief exhibited by The Market is of such high quality that it deserves a certification of sorts and at a higher level. It’s Level 8 stuff.
Nka! Ichuuuuuuuuuuuu
muckracker.post@gmail.com

 

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Muckraker

The Market of nonsense

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You are wrong if you think The Market’s statement about the alleged rape in their toilets is just terrible public relations or some error of judgment.
The statement reflects society’s attitude towards rape victims and women in general. That much is clear in the statement’s tone.

The statement says the alleged victim was “heavily intoxicated” but the truth is that its author was drunk from both something illegal and prejudice.
Even someone who had drunk all the beer, ciders, cocktails, whisky, gin and brandy in The Market would not come up with such a statement. This is top-notch BS rehearsed over years and expertly mastered. The Makhadzi dance to the alleged victim’s trauma.
But there is more to show their contempt for the alleged victim.
The one-page statement mentions the alleged victim’s name five times. Five!
It has 11 sentences and mentions the victim’s name in five of them.
It is unethical to mention rape victims by name but The Market did it anyway because they probably wanted to remind everyone that she is “that woman”.
You can bet your last January kobo that some dunderheads will justify naming her on the basis that she had already identified herself by posting the incident on social media. Nonsense!
The Market had no right to identify her by name in their statement.
They didn’t seek her consent. And even if they did, it’s still unethical.
To see that mentioning her name five times was not an innocent mistake you have to check how many times the statement mentions her alleged attacker‘s name. Zero!
This is despite that the alleged victim had revealed his name, or at least part of it, on social media. They call him “a staff member of one of the establishments at Maseru” and a “gentleman”.
They don’t even say the man is from one of the establishments at Maseru Mall because that would instantly narrow the list and expose him.
So they resort to saying “Maseru” as if Maseru City is synonymous with Maseru Mall. The idea was to keep his identity as vague as possible. Even if the alleged victim had not mentioned his name The Market knew him because the statement says he is “well known to The Market staff”.
There is a method to the madness here. The Market was at pains to protect the alleged attacker while loudly shouting the victim’s name. Ideally, neither the victim nor the suspect should have been mentioned by name. She is a victim of rape and the suspect was yet to appear in court.
Those with an eye for detail might have also noticed that The Market unashamedly tries to pretend to have suddenly discovered the woman’s rape allegations on her Facebook page. She reported to their staff soon after the alleged incident.
Muckraker will end this depressing story with one more observation.
The Market’s statement mentions “toilets” as if they have many toilets.
The reality is that it’s one toilet for men and women. The main entrance is the same and so is the washing area.
On busy nights you can use either of the cubicles. Muckraker has seen men budging into the women’s cubicle and vice-versa. “Hona le motho!” is a common scream in that toilet.
Muckraker has bumped into men with open zips and women pulling up their pants in the washing area. Women fixing their bras bump heads with men tucking in their shirts.
Whoever designed that toilet has a brain the size of the punctuation mark at the end of this sentence.
There are no words for those who thought it fit to be used by their patrons.
Nka! Ichuuuuuuuuuuuu
muckracker.post@gmail.com

 

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