SOME men are at a chisanyama at a bar in Thamae when a stranger walks to the braai stand packed with pork, mutton, beef and chicken.
From a paper bag the man pulls out a huge well-marinated and neatly spliced frog. You heard that right. A frog!
He finds a corner on the braai stand and lays out his frog.
The other men are flabbergasted by his nerve but cannot utter a word for two reasons: they don’t own the braai stand and there are no rules prohibiting exotic meats.

Some ten minutes later the man is turning his frog when its blood and juice spill onto a whole chicken. The chicken owner is furious at the frog eater.
“But why are you so angry? After all, it’s all meat,” the frog eater says in a soft voice.
“I don’t eat frogs so just shut up and replace my chicken,” the chicken eater says, amid vociferous support from his friends who are equally pissed.
You know how we like getting angry on other people’s behalf.

Sensing that he is outnumbered and understanding the injustice of it all, the frog eater buys another chicken for the complainant. A brawl averted, everyone goes back to having a good time.  But twenty minutes later another incident threatens to sabotage the shindig.

The chicken eater is turning his chicken when some of its blood and juice spill onto the frog.
The frog eater sighs and says: “Well, your chicken blood has spoiled my frog. I want a fresh frog.”
“And where the hell can I get the frog?” asks the shocked chicken eater.

“Well, that’s not my business. A few minutes ago I replaced your chicken. I just want my frog.”
The chicken eater’s friends are hopping mad at the frog eater for being a “difficult” man.
Muckraker leaves you to use your imagination as to what happened next for anything imaginable can happen in this little country. The fight might have escalated into a bloody fight.

But the moral of the story is as clear as a goat’s behind. Humans are generally hypocrites and they are brazen about it.
The “do unto others…” mantra only belongs to the Big Book. The real world is a mean place full of unashamedly hypocritical people.
The tendency, of course, is to hide behind the majority to avoid doing the right thing. And more often than not the so-called majority doesn’t have to be empirically verified before its views are accepted and its agenda sneaked to the top of the list.
In July 2015 Brigadier Maaparankoe Mahao, the man who had been cheated of his position as commander of the army, was killed by fellow soldiers in coldblood.
It wasn’t long before the opposition, journalists, civil organisations and the international community called for a thorough investigation into the murder. They were right to be outraged at this heinous act.
There was no way, so the reasoning was, the government could be trusted to fairly and prudently investigate that case. “Commission!” they screamed as Size Two and his comrades scampered for cover.

Soon a judge from Botswana and eleven other people from regional countries were grilling supposed role players for answers.
The commission did shed some light on what happened to Brigadier Mahao but its biggest contribution was to arm-twist the government to speed up the investigation.

We know that Size Two’s government dithered and hid behind its fingers until it was eventually spanked out of power by Uncle Tom and his comrades.
Now fast-forward to almost two years later and another disaster is looming.
Another commander has been killed.

This time, however, the commander has been killed in his office in the barracks.
Two senior soldiers are also dead.  In a state of disgust peppered with confusion the opposition and other people have called for another commission of inquiry.

Their questions are genuine but no one is listening. Instead they are being told to either shut up or move on because the answers to the questions they are asking are said to be obvious. Phew!

The journalists and activists who went berserk over the 2015 killing have suddenly lost their voices.

If that doesn’t go far enough in proving that we are hypocrites let’s flip the coin. In 2014 Justice Mosito was appointed president of the Court of Appeal.

He was just about to settle down when nails were put on his chair. A bunch of senior lawyers rolled their sleeves to fight his appointment on account that it was political and had been made by a caretaker government.  What that really meant is only clear to that legal battalion and its zealots. Every appointment of a senior government official in Lesotho is political. Even the hiring of government lawyers is steeped in politics.

As for the allegations that the appointment was done by a “caretaker government” Muckraker can only call it utter bunkum.
Uncle Tom’s government at that time was substantive in both law and stature. A bull does not cease to be a bull because it has lost a horn.

The animal they call “caretaker government” has not existed in this country for nearly 25 years. To call a government “caretaker” because we are a few weeks before an election is not only daft but also a pathetic attempt to rejig the constitution through mischievous means. It is a ploy to manufacture a power vacuum that does not exist.

You either have a government or you don’t.  But Muckraker digressed.
The bunch of lawyers galloped to the High Court where a judge told them to return whence they came. Hands over head, they returned to their chambers and it looked like Justice Mosito had won.

A change in government would however throw his tenure into a new quandary. This time the taxman was wheeled in to sting him.
Size Two’s government grasped on the case with unprecedented vim and started shoving him towards the exit door while the senior lawyers rubbed their hands with glee.
A tribunal was cobbled to look into his fitness to hold office but Justice Mosito bolted out of the kitchen before it made its recommendations whose import was obvious even to stray dogs in Seapoint.

He had to conserve what was left of his reputation viciously shredded by his enemies. Once again it looked like the judge was down and out.
He would however return when Size Two’s government limped out of office.  Uncle Tom wanted to ‘right the wrongs’ of the past and he reappointed him. The senior lawyers however regrouped again and sharpened their spears.

They have trooped back to the court again to challenge the appointment. So where is the hypocrisy, you may ask. Well, around the time Size Two was hauling Justice Mosito to the pyre he was also smearing Lieutenant General Tlali Kamoli’s wounds with balm.

As Lt Gen Kamoli walked back into an office from which he had been booted out by Uncle Tom the senior lawyers shut their eyes and zipped their mouths.  Not a word was uttered about the general having to challenge his dismissal before he goes back to the barracks. A government gazette announced his removal.

\It was fine and dandy, because this was their man who was being reappointed.  Now it’s sour because Justice Mosito, a man they hate with a passion, is being parachuted back into an office he left in a huff as political dogs gnawed at his heels.

You can split the hairs all you want but the principal behind both reinstatements is the same. They are both political.
Yet the senior lawyers see an injustice in one and perfect justice in the other. Muckraker is not saying the lawyers have no right to fight for a cause but if the fight is based on principal then their revulsion must be equally applied.

Still on the subject of duplicity, Muckraker demands to know why fellow journalists pretend to be blind at the heavy-handed treatment of MoAfrika and its owner.  Some advocacy groups seem to have deliberately shoved their heads in a sack.
They have mumbled a few words that amount to almost an apology to the government.

This was not the case when PC FM was being harassed by the previous government.
We did not see such meekness when the previous government was pelting journalists with stones.
Now a fellow journalist is being frogmarched from his office and his radio station unceremoniously yanked off air but these groups think this is jumping castle business.
This is precisely because we never deal with issues on the basis of principle.
Journalists and activists are caught in political vice.
They have been captured and they cannot deny it. Let any of them raise a finger and Muckraker will come down on them like a ton of bricks.
This also applies to all those cowards who think Facebook is a suitable arena to wage a war against perceived enemies. They will gather some ‘likes’ from fictitious friends but Muckraker will wash and hang them by the eyelids.

All this should however not distract us from the equally important issue of hygiene. Indeed, there can be no denying that Ratabane Ramainoane’s beard should interact more often with a scissors.  There is no point is growing anything you cannot harvest for food or profit. It’s not as if the Ministry of Tourism will soon be clamouring to make them a national tourist attraction.

As for that hair, Muckraker’s humble advice is that it should be trimmed.  Given the way the government has been pursuing him it might not be long before they throw him in a cell for days. There is no point in keeping anything that attracts the flies in a police cell.

\Muckraker has always wondered what is in that satchel that is always clinging on his bag. It makes him look older than he is.
Why load such a heavy thing on such an old backbone?