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Muckraker

The land of political jokes

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THIS week, there was a tickling Facebook tiff between the DC and LDC. Muckraker gobbled the virulent posts to keep boredom at bay.
It was a thoroughly enriching diversion from the numbingly dreary brouhaha in the ABC. The rumpus between the failed and desperate cousins (read LCD and DC) is more amusing than the kicking and scratching in the yellow camp.

There is nothing as enjoyable as a useless war of useless things. The fight in the ABC has ramifications on the government.
At least the factions are quarrelling over a party that is still substantial.
The party might be a two-legged horse but it remains the country’s biggest.
It is capable of charming lousy and broke girlfriends like the BNP, AD and RCL.

For those reasons you could forgive the ABC factions for pelting each other with boulders. There is something to fight for.
Their contest is therefore more of a matter of concern than a comical spectacle.
The same cannot be said of the combats between the DC and LCD zealots.
Muckraker will not bother to find out the source of the brawl because she doesn’t believe it matters.
Political hovels are not worth fighting for.

The LCD is a pathetic excuse of a party while the DC is a hobbling hobo of a party.
The LCD’s chances of getting back into government remain zero unless it prostitutes itself. Its two previous stints in government were a result of days of grand pimping.
It had to invite the DC to a marathon strip tease plus loads of extras to get cabinet posts.
Never mind that it was because of some ill-conceived partnership with the LCD that the DC failed at the polls.
Mothetjoa Metsing, the LCD leader, is long buried in a cesspool of self-inflicted scandals and clever propaganda from his opponents. He remains in that VIP pit despite his claims to have returned home.

Metsing is now a political midget who insists on playing among the big boys.
He has neither the talent nor the strength to hold his own in this game.
Henceforth, he will not get even a ladder to peep into the compound of power.
He cannot even qualify to be a gate boy at Qhobosheane. That means when it comes to getting into the corridors of power Metsing is way lower than those loud fellows who man the gates in Nigerian movies.

Were it not for this nonsense that party leaders cannot be challenged, he would have started packing his bags to leave the shabby little mokoko the LCD calls an office.
The DC might not deserve the tag of a “political spent force” but its decline is apparent.
Mosisili’s exit has the left the party bereft of a unifying figure with the political charm to keep the aggressive and greedy characters in the same boat.
In his place is Mokhothu, a young chap dismally failing to keep old hawks on a leash.
Controlling those oily snakes was bound to be tough because they don’t believe he has the character and stamina to take them back to the feeding trough.
The Sekatles jumped ship as soon Uncle Tom beckoned.
A flashy smile, good looks and soft voice don’t cut it in the jungle that is Lesotho’s politics.
They say he is not devious and sly enough. They don’t respect his reign because they see him as a political novice parachuted into leadership.

This reality in the DC and LCD explains why the Facebook fights between their dwindling supporters are hilarious. They remind Muckraker of an old story of how two vagrants who had shared a drain for years became sworn enemies.
One day, after rummaging through town bins for food, the two friends retreated to their hole to share crumbs and bones.
They were about to finish the meal when one of them asked a hypothetical question.
“Bro, what will we buy if we pick M10 on the streets,” he asked as he picked his teeth with a chicken bone.
“Well, I would say we buy a loaf of bread for that hearty meal we have always craved,” replied the other.
“No, I think we should buy a broom to clean this drain,” the other retorted with a tinge of agitation in his voice.
And thus began a heated dispute on whether to buy a broom or bread. When the argument finally ended the friendship had abruptly broken, but not before bloodied noses, broken bones and bashed heads.

They are yet to pick the M10 they fought over.
The same is happening to the LCD and DC supporters. They haven’t found power but they are squabbling over power. They are not fighting over strategies to wrestle power from Uncle Tom because they have none.
Muckraker suspects that frustration has something to do with their fights. For months they have waited for Uncle Tom’s wobbling government to tumble into its grave.
They keep praying that the fights in the ABC will be potent enough to upend the government.
They cannot understand why the RCL and the AD remain intact despite the catfights in their leadership. They now know that barring some spectacular divorce in the coalition they will remain in political Siberia.
The longer the wait, the more irritable they become. Bullies are petulant when they don’t get their way.
That is why they are now pouring bile on each other.

Sadly, their insults are not even creative. One DC zealot said Metsing is a thief.
That should have hurt were thievery taboo in this country.
An LDC supporter fired back by reminding everyone that Metsing has never been charged or convicted. That should have been a strong pushback were he talking to a congregation of dimwits.
Although Metsing has not been charged, he remains thoroughly convicted in the public court from which votes are generated. That ‘conviction’ will not change even if he is not charged by the police or convicted by the courts.

Another DC zealot accused the LCD of poisoning the well for his party in the last election.
He opined that the DC would not have lost so miserably if it had not cobbled an electoral deal with the LCD. He was right but, again, that is not an artistic insult.
Such unoriginal slurs should not be uttered on Facebook.
They make the utterer look like a silly copycat desperate to land a cheap shot by citing things from an old hymnbook of insults.
If you want to say something on social media stay away from the banal.
Where is thy wit, comrades?

We all know the LCD was the chain that fastened the DC to a pole in the last election.
It’s obvious that a combination of mediocrity (LCD’s main talent) and average (DC’s strength) is not a recipe for excellence. Depending on the mix you can remain mediocre or average.
The trouble for the DC was that the LCD’s mediocrity was so concentrated that it refused to be neutralized. The partnership’s defeat confirmed theirs to be a toxic mix.
In any case, it’s too late to scream about the whole episode.

Another asked DC supporters what sin the congress parties had committed to deserve characters like Metsing and Mokhosi. That too was a meek dig because the LCD sired the DC.
Both men were colleagues of the DC leaders.
As for what sin the congress has committed you only need to know that the congress parties, like all other parties in Lesotho, are a magnet for riffraff.
The question was answered decades ago.

The most humorous was an allegation by an LCD supporter that Mokhothu is a thief of money. Its sounds like a stinging insult until you look at the characters that inhabit the LCD.
Black pots should not enter a contest of blackness.
When it comes to a legacy of looting the DC and the LCD are joined at the hip.
Please note that Muckraker has not added a word to the allegations against Mokhothu or Metsing. She is not in the business of ululating for fighting rascals.
It’s been decades since she learned the perils of being a cheerleader for naughty scoundrels. If you ululate for a rascal who chooses to bath at a market you should not be shocked when he eats the soap.

The same applies to spurring a rascal at a funeral: he will fondle the corpse.
So Muckraker doesn’t give a rat’s behind whether the allegations are scandalous lies or stubborn truths.
All she wants is for these public displays of tomfoolery to last a little bit longer.

That is why she is furious at Metsing for trying to douse the fires at his weekend rally. Metsing said the supporters should desist from attacking their leaders.
Such attempts to interfere with Muckraker’s pleasures should be condemned with the contempt they deserve. Metsing should not sabotage free fun because he offers none as a replacement.
He has the personality of a stone and the oratory skills of a cat. A conversation with him is a sleeping pill. So when other people offer some entertainment Metsing should keep his monologues to himself. He might be the subject of the fights but that doesn’t mean his opinion matters.

On an entirely different note, Muckraker has had it to the back teeth with the delays in the ABC case. This morabaraba baloney is a joke that has long ceased to be funny.
Chief Justice ‘Maseforo Mahase doesn’t seem to know how to untangle this ABC knot. It seems she is hoping that by some miracle the factions will make peace without her intervention.
If that is the case then she is Waiting for Godot. There is a better chance of Lesotho becoming a superpower than the ABC factions finding each other. So she can huff and puff but she will eventually have to make a ruling.

That is what it means to be a chief justice. She must embrace the acting allowances with its troubles. That’s what you get for accepting a position stolen from a fellow sister. If you didn’t want the trouble you could have said “thank you, but let this calabash pass me”.
You, madam, knowingly imbibed the chalice.
Here you are in the hottest of hot seats, being asked to make a decision in which you will be accused of being captured whichever side she rules for.
If Justice ’Maseforo Mahase doesn’t rule on the matter in the next two weeks, Muckraker will start referring to her has Chief Justice ’Masefokol.
That nickname will remain hers to keep until she makes a ruling.

Nka! Ichuuuuuuuuuuu!

muckraker.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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Muckraker

Is Kabi a real lekoloane?

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Is Kabi a real lekoloane? That is not a trick question so don’t bother scratching your stressed head.
Even the goats in Matatiele, where he is alleged to have been initiated, know he is not a real lekoloane.
They know what he did last December and are as disgusted as the other makoloane who rightly feel he has cheated his way to the title.

The Matatiele goats know that other initiates had to spend at least five weeks at the initiation school to earn the honour of being called a lekoloane.
The leadership of the national initiation committee says claiming to be a lekoloane after just 72 hours at an initiation school is “unacceptable”.
Muckraker will call it fraud until Kabi proves otherwise.
Muckraker is not saying this to humiliate Kabi. He is a good fella but the stubborn reality is that he didn’t complete the course and therefore has no business pretending to be qualified.
It’s not as if Kabi entered the school with credits from another school. There was no transfer letter.
If there is a letter he should name his former principal.
He cannot claim to have attended initiation classes through Zoom and then went to complete the course with some practicals for 72 hours. He didn’t do distance learning because initiation schools are not UNISA.
There is no crash course in initiation school. That he qualified for mature entry doesn’t mean he could just sneak into the school hours before graduation and then claim to be a certified lekoloane.
The issue is not whether Kabi believes he is a real lekoloane because that doesn’t matter. Being in a plane doesn’t make you a pilot even if you scream to be regarded as one.
Muckraker has visited NUL’s law school but cannot claim to be a lawyer. She has joined the wires on her phone charger but is no electrician.
The real Makoloane are furious because he has cheated his way to their title and wants to be treated as their equal. They are right. Yet what Kabi has done is more serious than stealing a title. He has corrupted the institution of initiation.
He had no excuse for pulling the 72-hour trick at the initiation school.
Parliament was closed, they had dismally failed to topple Uncle Sam and his party is dead. He cannot claim he was busy running the ABC because Feselady and her hubby are still in charge.
For the past week, Muckraker has been wondering why Kabi could deliberately inflict such dishonour on himself.
The answer is that Kabi is entitled like other politicians. He wants to have the best for his minimum effort.
They want to earn the best perks but still claim to be the people’s humble servants. They want the people to vote for them for merely being present or promising something.
When held to the highest standards they point to the incompetence of other politicians.
Their favourite refrain is “at least….”
Kabi desperately wanted to be a lekoloane but was not prepared to put in the work.
The second part of the answer is that Kabi, like other politicians, thought he could get away with it. It’s an attitude informed by the general contempt politicians have for those they believe are beneath them.
It’s just that he has underestimated the resolve of other initiates to protect their institution from fraudsters and imposters.
Now he will be remembered as a political leader who was caught, pants down, masquerading as a lekoloane. The national initiation committee has said he is not wanted near an initiation school and if he is seen in the vicinity he will be forced to repeat the course.
Muckraker thinks “repeat” is not the right word. He will be starting from Grade 1, doing the ‘a, e, i, o, u’ of initiation school.
Ouch!
Kabi is worse than a high school dropout because dropouts don’t show up for graduation.
He is worse than those who insist on using the honorary doctorate title because, at least, that title is given voluntarily. There is nothing called an honourary lekoloane. You are either or not.
Those who cheat in exams are way better than him because, at least, they would have attended classes and qualified for exams but are just too daft. Kabi didn’t attend classes or take the exam.
He just arrived when others were rehearsing their graduation songs, got himself smeared with ochre and proudly walked to the podium to be capped.
Kabi is welcome to call himself a lekoloane but he will be a lekoloane in his head and not to anyone else.
He might as well have spent the 72 hours plotting to topple Uncle Sam because he will never be a lekoloane even if he smears himself with a Maqalika of ochre and recites initiation songs a million times.
A man who is not initiated is called a leqai but what do we call one who tries to cheat their way to initiation?
Let’s call him a kabi. And that is a real title because it is earned. Finally, oh finally, Kabi has invented something useful. Hooray!
Nka! Ichuuuuuuuuuuuu
muckracker.post@gmail.com

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