Insight
Imperatives of professionalising public service
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6 years agoon
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The PostSince Lesotho gained independence five decades ago, there have been frequent cases of political instability that drastically stifled anticipated development. While there is a tendency to blame all the ills to a weak political system, focus should also be on establishing whether public service competently and professionally carries out its mandate. Since Lesotho gained independence five decades ago, there have been frequent cases of political instability that drastically stifled anticipated development. While there is a tendency to blame all the ills to a weak political system, focus should also be on establishing whether public service competently and professionally carries out its mandate. This paper argues that competent and professional public service plays an indispensable role towards improving the economy of a country and strengthening the pillars of sustainable development and efficient governance.
Premised on profound reflection on minimal strides of public service in Lesotho, inferences are drawn that it failed to play the role entrusted to it because of the prevailing political patronage and weak government systems. It becomes clear, therefore, that, lack of professionalism in the public service in Lesotho will engender and perpetuate seemingly perennial political and socioeconomic perils. The paper is largely dependent on the literature on ethics and professionalism in the public service. Government official documents such as the Constitution and the Public Service Act of 2005 were also referred to as reliable sources that articulate the role of public officials.
Former and current senior public officials’ observations about the performance of the public service were purposively obtained. Based on overt lack of professionalism and weak government systems, this paper recommends that the public service in Lesotho should put in place good systems that will enable it to maintain required professionalism. It also recommends that continued tenure in office by top officials should be based on satisfactory performance.
The role of government is wide and influences, either positively or negatively, almost all the operations of other organisations within a country. Thus, the success of all organisations in a country largely depends on the efficiency of government. Among others, prevalence of professionalism in the public service is one of the necessary conditions towards enhanced efficiency of the government. The heightening consciousness among the members of the public about the lack of professionalism in the public service results from unscrupulous conduct of politicians and bureaucrats (Kuye and Mafunisa, 2003: 421). Since both politicians and bureaucrats serve in the public domain, they ought to account for every task that they discharge in the public interest. Relationship between politicians and bureaucrats should ideally enable prompt, responsive and impartial service delivery. Failure to professionally and ethically conduct the business of government erodes public trust, which ought to bond public service and the citizens.
The thesis that this chapter advances is that, a professional public service in Lesotho is an integral variable in securing stability of government because the public service plays an indispensable role in assisting governments to carry out their mandates and to implement their policies.
As Woodrow Wilson (1887: 198) contends, administration is the most obvious part of government, demonstrating that it is in action. Different regimes in Lesotho have neglected the responsibility to nurture a competent and professional public service. The prevailing nonconformity of public officials’ conduct with established standards, codes of conduct and policies are noticeable indicators depicting lack of professionalism in the public service. This problem has engendered a number of problems, including flawed government systems, unprofessional conduct, and political patronage, all of which have become very conspicuous. Broadbent and Laughlin (2012: 293) suggest that, systems in the public service should be geared towards defining, controlling and managing both the achievement of outcomes or ends as well as the means used to achieve the results.
The existence of effective systems in the public service is crucial towards enhanced performance and professionalism. Good systems have the potential to transcend regimes and generations and to promote sustainable efficiency in service delivery. Deficiencies in systems and professionalism in the public service in Lesotho are worsened by a constantly volatile political landscape which dates back to the beginning of the independence era. There is a dire need for public service in Lesotho to map out strategies towards its professionalization so that it can competently discharge its mandate. For this to be attained there ought to be a systematic approach on how professionalism is mainstreamed into the public service culture.
Conceptualising Professional Public Services
Public service is concerned with the business of government. It deals with how the machinery of government should work for effective and efficient service delivery. Due to its wide scope, public service borders with virtually all areas that affect human life. Because public service touches on all aspects of citizens’ lives, all public officials need to adhere to professional values. This would ensure that public interests are prioritised above narrow interests of individual public officials.Professional public service is the springboard of sustainable development and stability in a country. It is based on professional public officials who possess required qualifications and also exhibit unreserved commitment, competence and maintenance of high professional standards. Professionalism is commonly understood to be concerned about the rules and standards governing the conduct of the members of a profession (Fattah, 2011: 65).
Professional public service would, thus, refer to public officials’ willingness to discharge their responsibilities under the guidance of the rules and standards that govern their conduct. Fatah (2011: 65) contends that the dearth of professionalism among the public servants has, in part, contributed to lack of citizens’ confidence in their officials, and is also a contributing factor in the emergence of weak and failed states that lack capacity. This observation was based on the research which showed that prospects of development and progress are bleak without credible, ethical and professional public organizations (Bagchi in Fattah, 2011: 65). Because political stability is possible where there is sustainable development, it means that a professional public service is an indispensable ingredient in any attempt to establish and maintain a politically stable society.
In order to uphold high professional standards within the public service, public officials, as moral agents, should constantly maintain the highest professional standards. This is because the acid test of professionalism lies in the ability of professionals to diligently execute their duties to their clients (Hedahl, 2013:1). It is imperative of public officials, therefore, to responsibly serve the public to the highest professional and ethical standards. Based on this professional responsibility, which is underpinned by duty, it is reasonable to infer that public service is largely about the duties of government towards the citizens. The perpetual challenge confronting public service is building and maintaining professional culture. Often, efforts that are taken to cultivate a professional culture in the public service fail to reach fruition due to flawed strategies deployed.
Above all, the greatest challenge is lack of political will to support initiatives aimed at professionalising the public service. Inevitable results ensuing from lack of professional culture culminate in the lack of conformity between bureaucrats’ conduct and established policies, systems and standards. Studies on professionalism in the public service have immensely proliferated in the last three decades (Cooper, 2004:395). This is evidenced by the number of journal articles, conferences and training exercises on professionalism, which, at times, present professionalism in the public service as a complex phenomenon that is not easily implemented (Radhika, 2012:23).
At the hub of public service are skilled and knowledgeable technocrats who specialised in different areas relevant for discharging the business of government. Professionals subscribe to different value systems; this turns out to be another challenge threatening establishment of professional culture in the public service. There exists an asymmetrical approach in the emphasis and inculcation of professional values in different professions. It, therefore, follows that, each profession will emphasise particular professional values that best advance its professionalism. This calls for a concerted effort to train top bureaucrats on ethics and professionalism so that they become competent overseers for the entire public service.
According to Mafunisa (2008:81), unprofessional behaviour in the public service may be manifested under the following forms: covering up incompetence, fraud, bribery, corruption, sexual harassment, nepotism, victimization, subjective and arbitrary decisions, a disclosure of confidential information, tax evasion, speed money and inefficiency. Although the list can go on, the great concern is on the role of professionalism in the public service towards overcoming each of these challenges.
Kuye (2003:421) argues that a professional public official is the one who pursues values such as accountability, integrity, neutrality, efficiency, effectiveness, responsiveness, representativeness, and equity in the procurement of good governance in the public service. As a means of realizing these values and mainstreaming professional culture in the public service, Mafunisa (2008:81) refers to codes of conduct as some of the viable means for promoting professional culture among the public servants. He goes on to give practical means of translating codes of conduct and other ethical principles into reality within the public service by emphasizing the importance of the following points:
l Principles for the promotion of ethical conduct; l Clear ethical standards; l The reflection of ethical standards in the legal framework;l Ethical guidance to public employees;l Political commitment to reinforcing the ethical conduct of public employees;l Senior public managers should demonstrate and promote ethical conduct.
Although the suggested points may be sound and plausible for cultivating professional culture in public service, their implementation may still be wanting. This may be reflected by lack of clear policies geared towards promoting professional culture in the public service.
In this way, each of them requires a careful consideration, and this calls for profound ethical knowledge and competency by public administrators at all levels. In relation to professional competency, Radhika (2012:25) quotes the ancient philosopher, Socrates, who contended that “knowledge and morality are interrelated and one cannot be moral if one does not know what morals are and what is good for mankind.” It is for this reason that, Socrates thought of virtue as the centrepiece of knowledge and argued that virtue is knowledge. Dvoráková (2005:173) postulates the following four ways through which professionalism within public officials can be saved and developed:
l Educational systems preceding the accession into the public sector, especially in the case of civil service appointments,l Training and development,l The acceptance of written regulations and the code of ethics of public administration employees,l The influence of supervisors and their leadership style
All of these four undertakings are indispensable towards successful integration of professional culture in the public domain. Their successful implementation depends, largely, on professional competency of those who pedagogically take others through them.
Ethics as a Basis of Professional Public Service
In order to make sense out of ethical and culture of professionalism in the public service, it is vital to explore relevant moral principles and values that would be instrumental towards the establishment of such culture. The reason for this approach is that ethics and professionalism in public service fall squarely under the domain of applied ethics.Culture of professionalism will only prevail in the public service if public officials are driven by a sense of duty. As deontological approach to ethics attests, what makes a human act ethically acceptable lies in the act itself, not the results that it produces. One of the renowned proponents of this theory is Immanuel Kant who used two imperatives to ascertain the morality of human act. Kant made a distinction between categorical imperative and hypothetical imperative, where the former is ethically binding while the latter has no ethical obligation (Rachels, 2007: 121). Categorical imperative is two pronged and is summarized thus:
l Always act in such a way that you can also will that the rule or maxim of your action should become a universal law;l Act so that you treat humanity, both in your own person and in that of another, always as an end and never merely as a means. (Kant in Miller, Roberts and Spence, 2005: 65)It becomes evident from the first imperative that, a public official ought to be convinced by his action and wish that it can be universally applicable to persons who come across a similar situation.
The second imperative seeks to treat humanity as a kingdom of ends, where none can be used solely as a means to advance selfish interests of an individual. A deontologist public official is the onewho shuns corruption at all costs albeit aware of the personal gain and fortune that such corruption might bring into his life. Thus, if corruption is considered to be universally unethical, it should be abhorred under all circumstances.Ethics and professionalism in the public service can also be approached from the virtue ethics perspective. This approach emphasises that, moral agents ought to cultivate virtuous character traits. The approach was mostly shaped by Aristotle, who made a distinction between intellectual virtue and moral virtue. Virtue is learned and people acquire it over time through practice. Under virtue ethics, a person acts in a particular way and exhibits relevant virtue for the sake of morality itself (Christensen and Laegreid, 2011:461). Further, under this theory, public officials are expected to exhibit virtuous acts when they render services to their customers.
A public official who has cultivated a virtuous character, will at all times, strive to meet the interests of the public even if doing so does not benefit him or her. It is vital to make reference to African morality because in the world so interconnected, with people from different cultural and religious backgrounds, it is important to appreciate other ethical traditions (Murove, 2009: 14). Ubuntu, as an African moral theory that is widely acknowledged in sub-Saharan context, finds full expression in African languages in Southern Africa: motho ke motho ka batho babang (Sesotho) or umntu ngumntu ngabay’ abantu (Xhosa); both statements can be literally translated as ‘a person is person through other persons’ (Munyaka and Motlhabi in Murove, 2009: 65). Ubuntu emphasises a constant need for human beings to act humanely towards others. It can also be referred to as an ideal stewardship theory.
Ramose (1999: 77) provides a profound reflection on ubuntu as a “quality of being”, or an indispensable human characteristics that underpins the primacy of the value of being a human. According to this perspective, a person who subscribes to ubuntu habitually cultivates a virtuous character by constantly performing good deeds that promote the wellbeing of others. Ubuntu has a great potential to promote professionalism in the public service by inculcating to public officials a sense of prioritising and promoting community wellbeing above selfish interests of an individual such as political patronage, nepotism and favouritism.
By ; Napo C. Khasoane
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Your Excellency,
I am certain that you are wondering where and/or how I have the temerity to write to you directly, but a recent post you put on WhatsApp piqued my interest; your meeting with His Excellency the Prime Minister of Lesotho, and his delegation. The delegation came to introduce to you and your good office the candidate of the Government of Lesotho, for the post of Secretary General of the Commonwealth, Joshua Setipa.
Let me set off by stating that I have a friendship with Setipa, for over 50 years, so I may not be the best person to give an objective appraisal or opinion of him; this I will leave to the government.
Further to that, as a citizen of Lesotho, I may embellish the information that I would provide on Lesotho, thus I will as far as possible keep to information that is contained in books. This is not a research report, but more a simplified literature review of what I have read. I shall not quote them, or reference them, thus allowing others the space to research this matter further.
First, let me state my surprise at the alignment of time that I see; Commonwealth Day in 2024 is on the 11th March, the day we celebrate a life well lived, that of Morena Moshoeshoe.
Further to that, this year also starts the 200th anniversary of the move by Morena Moshoeshoe and his followers from Menkhoaneng to Thaba Bosiu. They arrived at Thaba Bosiu in winter, circa 1824.
Next year, 2025 will also be the 100th anniversary of the ‘plenary’ that saw the birth of this Commonwealth of Nations. A handover from the bi-centenary, to the centenary celebrations.
We are all aware that the Commonwealth was started at the Imperial Conference of 1926, but it had what I call a plenary in 1925; this happened in Maseru, Basutoland. It was held at the ‘secretariat’ building on Kingsway. The building was used as the Prime Ministers’ office after independence, more recently, and to date as the Ministry of Defence.
When King George came to visit Lesotho in 1948, to thank the country and her citizens for their participation in the Second World War, High street as it was then known, had its name changed to Kingsway.
At this plenary Britain called the ANZaC states, Australia, New Zeeland and Canada, together with South Africa. It had been only 13 years (1912) since the Basotho monarch had been asked to attend the formation of the South African National Native Conference (SANNC), whose aim was to preserve African land. The SANNC was the forerunner to the African National Congress (ANC).
With the formation of the Union of South Africa, the union wanted to engulf Bechuanaland (Botswana) Swaziland (eSwatini) and Basutoland (Lesotho). This had been unsuccessful.
Next they came up with the Native Land Act of 1913, to remove African land rights. So, the conference that brought about the birth of the SANNC was a pre-emptive response to this act; an attempt to keep African land rights and traditions intact.
I would like to point out that the founding document of the Imperial Conference that brought about the Commonwealth states that all member states are autonomous and not subordinate to another.
At the time of the plenary, Basutoland was subordinate to Britain. But in a masterstoke became what I believe to be one of the founders of the Commonwealth.
Despite her subordination, Basutoland had placed so strong an objection to the presence of a representative South Africa in Basutoland, that South Africa’s invitation had to be withdrawn, and South Africa did not attend. This was the first ‘anti-apartheid’ shot, made in the world; what is more important is that it was made by an African country.
No matter how one looks at it, she may not have been a ‘founding member state’, but Basutoland was part of the founding fabric of the Commonwealth.
One just has to imagine the anger of the South Africans and their government: Dr. D. F. Malan, the first Nationalist Prime Minister of South Africa, was a minister responsible for housing at that time.
Had Basutoland’s lead been followed, spatial apartheid might never have happened. The Commonwealth would take till the 1960’s, and the formal legalisation/legislation of apartheid to remove South Africa from within her fold. A matter that Basutoland saw as far back as the 1920’s.
As shown, at the conceptualisation of the Commonwealth Lesotho was not just there, but an active and formidable participant; though one has to look further to see her relationship with Great Britain/the United Kingdom.
Basutoland/Lesotho’s history is strange, to say the least. The first Europeans to arrive here in 1833, were French Missionaries. At this time Europe was embroiled in wars, which inevitably included the French and English.
But it is these same priests, most notably Casalis, who helped steer the country to Britain, and British protection. Casalis acted almost as a foreign secretary/minister of foreign affairs at that time.
The first treaty between Basutoland and England was the Napier Treaty of 1843, though it took till 1866 to solidify this treaty into a protected land.
The history of the cavalry in Lesotho, the only African cavalry south of the Sahara, is quite long. It starts in about 1825, when F. D. Ellenberger in his book ‘History of the Basutho’, states that Morena Moletsane had come across gun powder quite by mistake.
They had been raiding a missionary’s home and came across a strange powder, which they found useless, so they threw it into a fire, which ‘exploded’. Thus, to his people called European style housing, ‘Ntlo-ea-thunya’, a house that shoots. But after having his people ravaged/savaged by Mzilikazi, he sent his best warriors to work on Boer farms, and with their remuneration purchase arms and horses.
We are often told of a ‘battle of/at Berea’. My answer is that it was not a battle but a cattle raid. Its importance is not just in the battle, but in democracy. The British called Morena Moshoeshoe ‘paramount chief’, a first amongst the others. The time before Berea shows something slightly different.
As Casalis writes in ‘My life in Basutoland’, the British had demanded 10,000 head of cattle, for stock theft. A great ‘pitso’ was called and all eligible men, those who owned land, were called.
At the end of the pitso, after many votes, the citizens refused to give their cattle to pay the demand of the British. The significance herein is that there was a plebiscite, a vote. Morena Moshoeshoe lost the backing of the people and thus the vote; the British then attacked to ‘collect’ the cattle themselves.
Both Morena Moshoeshoe and Morena Moletsane were heavily involved in the ‘battle’ which was won by the strength of the Basutho cavalry. Looking forward to the gun wars, it was most fortuitous that Morena Moshoeshoe’s ally, Morena Moletsane would outlive him, till the end of the gun wars.
After annexation in 1866, in the mid 1870’s the British, citing distance and as such expense, ceded Basutoland to the Cape, which was what the Basotho had been fighting against for a long time; they wanted direct British rule. They wanted to be ruled by Mofumahali Queen Victoria.
The first, and most critical mistake that the Cape made was, not so much in attacking Morena Moorosi, accusing his son of cattle theft, but in beheading him.
So, when some years later they wanted to disarm the Basutho, and they found those of the south of Basutoland who knew of the beheading, reluctant to go with the plan. The Cape decided to go ahead with disarmament forcefully and met equal if not greater force.
The Basutho were better armed, more knowledgeable on the terrain and better supplied. Helped by his father’s long-standing ally, Morena Moletsane, Morena Lerotholi was able to field a well-armed strong cavalry, which inflict great pain to the Cape.
This led to the Cape defeat. Together with the number of other wars that the Cape was fighting, there was fight fatigue among her people.
So bad was it, that they did not come and collect their fallen troops; in Mafeteng there is a cemetery called ‘mabitla-a-makhooa’, or graves of the white men. The SA Military History Society has a ‘roll of honour’ for some of the dead, as not all were buried in Basutoland.
There are two significant outcomes of the war. In his book ‘The Mabille’s of Basutoland’, Edwin W. Smith states that there was a fact-finding mission to Basutoland by members of the Cape parliament, including Rhodes. Their conclusion was that the Basutho should be handed back to Britain for direct rule; which was the original wish of the Basutho.
As Whitehall was reluctant to take this role back, Basutoland spent a period of close to two years of self-rule. Thus it became the first African country (only?) to unshackle itself of colonial rule. And became the first African country to get the colonial rule it wanted; and re-shackled itself to Britain.
The second is how Britain agreed to go back and rule Basutoland. In his book, Rhodes Goes North, J. E. S. Green shows how the Prime Minister of the Cape went to Britain to sue for peace, and eventually agreed to give Britain 20 000 pounds per annum, of her import tax revenues to govern Basutoland.
Whilst not a founding member of the Commonwealth, Basutoland has carried her fair weight in the battle to save both the Commonwealth, and together the rest of the Commonwealth, the world at large.
Whilst SA will hype the losses during the maritime accident of the SS Mendi in the English Channel, Lesotho is less inclined to speak of the losses on the SS Erinpura. The Erinpura was sunk by German war planes in the Mediterranean Sea. Though I should say that, the prayer of the men on the Mendi would resound so well with those who lost their lives on the Erinpura.
When British Prime Minister, Sir Winston Churchill said; never was so much owed by so many to so few, I am certain he was speaking not just of the people of the British Isles, but the broader community within the Commonwealth, that stood together at this time of international need.
But having heard Sir Winston, there is a special bond of Basutoland within, and with the Commonwealth, that I would like to highlight. Apart from the ANZaC countries and South Africa, there were no air squadrons from other Commonwealth countries that I am aware of; except for Basutoland that is.
They paid for 12 or so Spitfire aircraft that would form the 72nd Basutoland, which flew in the Battle of Britain. No moSotho actually flew (in?) them, but they had been financed by the Basotho.
For all the prowess of a moSotho man with arms, in his book ‘Basotho Soldiers in Hitler’s War’, Brian Gary not only writes about the gift of aircraft that fought in the Battle of Britain, he also shows that Basotho soldiers, who were hauling various ordinances through the Italian Alps, were allowed to carry arms.
Aircraft and carrying arms for an African in World War II; Lesotho is not just a pioneer member of the Commonwealth, but a beacon.
As Lesotho many of these pioneering attributes continued. Whist South Africa was banned from sports and entertainment, Lesotho filled the gap for her. Exiles like Hugh Masekela and Mirriam Makeba were hosted for sell out concerts in Lesotho. South African interracial sports, with matches between the likes of Orlando Pirate, Wits University, Kaiser Chiefs, to name those I remember, started in Maseru.
I have touched on politics and war, sport and entertainment; let me go to superstition. It would go against what is expected of me not to go without anything superstitious.
Britain has given the world three major sporting codes. Rugby, which is dominated by the big three of New Zeeland and South Africa. Cricket, which expands from the rugby three to include India, Pakistan, most of the Caribbean states and a few African counties.
These sports are obviously ‘Commonwealth Sports’, as they are dominated, or played predominantly by Commonwealth countries. They have also given us football. This is a truly global sport, the largest sport played across the world, on all types of surfaces, with all types of round looking objects. We can’t call all of these footballs.
The last time a Commonwealth country won the World Cup it was England in 1966; the year Lesotho gained her independence.
The next World Cup is in 2026, the millennium celebrations of the Commonwealth; who will head the Commonwealth then? Will a Commonwealth team have the necessary ‘juju’ to make it?
Your Excellency, this is but a brief note on Lesotho, and it is my way of using the words attributed to Morena Moshoeshoe, when asking for protection from Queen Victoria that say; take me, and all the lice (those that are symbiotic to me) in my blanket. I do hope that these words will be of use to you as seek consensus on Lesotho and her candidate for the post of Secretary General of the Commonwealth.
Yours truly
Khasane Ramolefe
A few weeks ago these pages carried a substantial piece by Mokhosi Mohapi titled “A reversal of our traditions and culture”, written in the form of an open letter to the government of Lesotho. The first sentence of Mohapi’s article took me by surprise, as he stated: MPs and Senators’ primary role is to protect and preserve the traditions and culture of the Basotho people. I would have thought the primary role of MPs and Senators would be to ensure that Basotho are secure (being protected, for example, from criminals), that they have adequate access to social services such as education and healthcare, that the economy is sufficiently stable to offer citizens some chance of employment, and so on. Fat chance, you might scoff.
But then I realised that Mohapi had a more specific contention in mind, as he stated: The Laws of Lerotholi were set to protect social order, traditions and culture of Basotho. Mohapi’s immediate concern is with the 2024 Estates and Inheritance Bill, which proposes radical changes to the existing order of things. (See the article in last week’s thepost, “MPs bulldoze through Inheritance Bill”, which gives a good idea of the background).
I’m aware that this Bill has provoked considerable controversy, and that is not my topic in this article. Nor do I wish to contest what Mohapi was saying in his piece — this is by no means a case of Dunton v Mohapi. But I did take note of the way the phrase “traditions and culture” kept resounding in Mohapi’s article, rather like a cracked bell, and what I want to do is open up those terms for examination.
Please bear with me as I slip aside for a moment with a little academic stuff. Back in 2006 I published an article titled “Problematizing Keywords: Culture, tradition and modernity.” For those of my readers with a scholarly bent and who might want to hunt it down, this was published in a journal called Boleswa Occasional Papers in Theology and Religion 2:3 (2006), pages 5-11. There I made a number of points I want to bring up in what follows.
The first fallacy I tackled in that article was the tradition/modernity binary — the notion that in Africa there was tradition and then, wham!, the white man arrived and there was modernity. Are we seriously to believe there were no great cities in Africa before the white man landed, that the peoples of a whole continent lived entirely in villages? Nigeria tells a different story.
Are we to believe there were no great libraries? Mali and Ethiopia tell a different tale. No writing systems? No medicine? I’m not saying that if I’m in pain I don’t prefer a dose of oramorph to an infusion made from some leaves picked off the slopes of Thaba Bosiu, but the point remains: the tradition/modernity binary is crude and crass and it’s demeaning about Africa.
We cannot get very far with simplistic ideas about where we are coming from and where we are at. And yet of course we do come from a past. I’ll quote — or, rather, paraphrase from memory, as I don’t have the work to hand — an observation made by T.S Eliot in his essay “Tradition and the Individual Talent”: We know so much more than those who came before us. But they are a large part of what we know.
But of those who came before who is it, exactly, that we know? When Mohapi repeatedly uses the phrase “the traditions and culture of the Basotho people” I take it he is thinking of the Basotho as constituted under Moshoeshoe I and the descendants of those generations.
For how much do we know about the “traditions and culture” of the various Sotho-speaking groups let’s say two hundred years before Moshoeshoe gathered them together to form the modern Lesotho state? Isn’t it likely there were significant differences between the “traditions and culture” of these groups, differences that were later rationalised or homogenised?
Two points here. First, we mustn’t forget what an extraordinary innovator Moshoeshoe was —and I guess that might be said also of Lerotholi, whose laws are the chief focus of Mohapi’s article. Second, culture is not static, it is not immutable. It evolves all the time.
For example, for how long has it been the case that adherence to the Christian faith could be said to be part of the culture of Basotho? (Or, for how long has football been part of the culture of the English? We are credited with the invention of football, but that doesn’t mean it’s been part of who we are since time immemorial).
That brings me to my next point, or a string of points, moving from England back to Lesotho. When I was a schoolboy I bought myself a copy of the book Components of the National Culture (1968) by the great British Marxist Perry Anderson. One of my schoolmasters — one of the few who didn’t like me — caught me with it and said “just the sort of book I’d expect a troublemaker like you to be reading. Just don’t show it to anyone else!”
The significant term in Anderson’s title is “components.” Culture is put together — it is an assemblage — and its components may have different sources.
That leads me on to the invention of tradition, and an example for Basotho.
I guess all my readers know Qiloane, the sandstone pillar at Thaba Bosiu the distinctive peak of which is said to be the inspiration for the shape of the traditional Basotho straw hat. Well, that notion is dubious to say the least; there were hats of the same shape from elsewhere in the region long before the Basotho got hold of the design.
Does this really matter? Well, no, because even if a tradition is invented, it still has the persuasiveness of a tradition. It’s just that knowing this might dissuade us from making big claims about the unchangeable nature and sanctity of tradition.
And the same goes for culture. I leave you with a quotation from the Ghanaian philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah (it’s from his terrific book Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers): We do not need, have never needed, a homogenous system of values, in order to have a home. Cultural purity is an oxymoron.
Chris Dunton is a former Professor of English and Dean of Humanities at the National University of Lesotho.
Last week I was talking about how jokes, or humour generally, can help get one through the most desperate situations (although it’s like taking a paracetamol for a headache; a much, much stronger resort is faith). I used the example of how Polish Jews, trapped and dying in the Warsaw ghetto, used humour to get them through day by day.
A similar, though less nightmarish, situation obtains in today’s Nigeria. Conditions there are less hellish than those of the Warsaw ghetto, but still pretty awful. There are massive redundancies, so millions of people are jobless. Inflation is at about 30% and the cost of living is sky-rocketing, with the most basic foodstuffs often unavailable. There is the breakdown of basic social services.
And endemic violence, with widespread armed robbery (to travel by road from one city to another you take your life in your hands) and the frequent kidnapping for ransom of schoolchildren and teachers. In a recent issue of the Punch newspaper (Lagos) Taiwo Obindo, Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Jos, writes of the effects of economic hardship and insecurity on his people’s mental health.
He concludes: “We should see the funny side of things. We can use humour to handle some things. Don’t take things to heart; laugh it off.”
Professor Obindo doesn’t, regrettably, give examples of the humour he prescribes, but I remember two from a period when things were less grim. Power-cuts happened all the time — a big problem if you’re trying to work at night and can’t afford a generator.
And so the National Electric Power Authority (NEPA) was universally referred to as Never Expect Power Always. And second, for inter-city travel there was a company called Luxurious Buses. Believe me, the average Lesotho kombi is a great deal more luxurious (I can’t remember ever having to sit on the floor of one of those).
And because of the dreadful state of Nigerian roads and the frequent fatal crashes, Luxurious Buses were referred to as Luxurious Hearses.
Lesotho’s newspaper thepost, for which I slave away tirelessly, doesn’t use humour very much. But there is Muckraker. I’ve always wondered whether Muckraker is the pen-name of a single person or a group who alternate writing the column.
Whatever, I’d love to have a drink with him / her/ them and chew things over. I like the ironic pen-name of the author(s). Traditionally speaking, a muckraker is a gossip, someone who scrabbles around for titbits (usually sexual) on the personal life of a celebrity — not exactly a noble thing to do.
But thepost’s Muckraker exposes big problems, deep demerits, conducted by those who should know and do better — problems that the powerful would like to be swept under the carpet, and the intention of Muckraker’s exposure is corrective.
And I always join in the closing exasperated “Ichuuuu!” (as I do this rather loudly, my housemates probably think I’m going bonkers).
Finally I want to mention television satire. The Brits are renowned for this, an achievement dating back to the early 1960s and the weekly satirical programme “TW3” (That Was The Week That Was). More recently we have had “Mock the Week”, though, despite its popularity, the BBC has cancelled this.
The cancellation wasn’t for political reasons. For decades the UK has been encumbered with a foul Conservative government, though this year’s election may be won by Labour (not such very good news, as the Labour leadership is only pseudo-socialist). “Mock the Week” was pretty even-handed in deriding politicians; the BBC’s problem was, I imagine, with the programme’s frequent obscenity.
As an example of their political jokes, I quote a discussion on the less than inspiring leader of the Labour Party, Sir Keir Starmer. One member of the panel said: “Labour may well have a huge lead in the polls at present, but the day before election day Starmer will destroy it by doing something like accidentally infecting David Attenborough with chicken-pox.”
And a favourite, basically non-political interchange on “Mock the Week” had to do with our former monarch, Queen Elizabeth II. Whatever one thinks about the British monarchy as an institution, the Queen was much loved, but the following interchange between two panellists (A and B) was fun:
A: Is the Queen’s nickname really Lilibet?
B: Yes, it is.
A: I thought her nickname was Her Majesty.
B: That’s her gang name.
OK, dear readers, that’s enough humour from me for a while. Next week I’m turning dead serious — and more than a little controversial — responding to a recent Insight piece by Mokhosi Mohapi titled “A reversal of our traditions and culture.” To be forewarned is to be prepared.
Chris Dunton
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