Insight
Only a functional DCEO can salvage our dignity
Published
5 years agoon
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The PostThe reality is that whenever a debate on corruption comes to the mould, it often amounts to a theatrical performance by politicians and ordinary citizens alike who endeavour to ride on a high horse and pose as ethical virgins like Jeffrey Archer’s fictitious character in Clean Sweep Ignatius.
This debate over the past weeks has been an interesting sloganeering performance where the mundane impact of corruption is discussed by the politicians in sophisticated seminars and plenary discussions like an opera verse of The Three Tenors. In all of these platforms one is inclined to draw a conclusion that it is usually an event that ends in romantic rhetoric.
I will make an attempt to move away from the mundane routine which the Basotho society were fed these past few days and perhaps all these past years by senior politicians and international diplomats alike but will endeavour to illustrate that the often less debated phenomenon of ‘the corrupt fight against corruption’ is clearly an issue that warrants debate.
The ripple effect of fighting corruption through corrupt means is that it bears the potential of destroying the lives of both high ranking public servants, politicians and ordinary citizens alike on baseless charges which seldom lead to convictions in courts of law.
I will seek to be allowed to debate this issue from a perspective of a legal practitioner who has carefully scrutinized the efficiency of the law enforcement agencies in combating corruption and the factors which are inhibitive in them achieving that end in optimum proportions.
I will ultimately illustrate that one of the reasons which may actually prohibit these institutions from achieving the noble ends of efficiently combating corruption or crime for that matter is when these institutions themselves are infested with corrupt individuals whose main efforts are meant to achieve self-serving ends as opposed to the broad-based mandate of the institutions they serve.
I will, with hindsight, endeavour to illustrate that one of the factors that contribute to the waning confidence in the law enforcement institutions is when they dance to the tunes of politicians of the day (particularly those at the helm of power) and compromise their professional autonomy.
That in itself I shall strongly argue is in itself corruption which must be strongly deprecated. For a start, the fight against corruption must not be facilitated corruptly.
The growing trend or perhaps brewing perception is that the DCEO is a gauge that is utilized by politicians to subject the investigated citizens to a conviction of the court of public opinion even prior to the prosecution of their criminal trials. The radio and newspapers have over the years focused on the institution’s agents-and-corrupt villains or sleuths-versus-corrupt politicians of its work and they translate into headlines.
They hardly touched at all on the organisational handicaps and attendant mechanisms which are employed by its agents to act contrary to the mandate of the said institution and let alone the constitution. Careers of public servants and the so-called ‘Politically Exposed Persons’ are wrecked in this manner on the pretext that they are corrupt.
And owing to the broad-based powers conferred upon the institution under the innovative and decade-old money laundering legislation they wantonly approach courts of law for a parallel civil suit and facilitate the seizure of goods alleged to be proceeds of crime without notice to the suspected individuals.
This subjects them to severe prejudice. This legislation is yet to be placed on the radar through litigation and a clearly defined procedure must be articulated and refined by courts of law.
The DCEO should not be an institution that is utilized by governments to intimidate political adversaries or the so-called Politically Exposed Persons. The responsibility of achieving this end lies with its professional staff. It warrants emphasizing that the DCEO is only as good as the support and validation that it receives from the public irrespective of political allegiance or political ideology for that matter.
A clear, open and demonstrated performance yields the respect and cooperation of not only the prosecution authorities, the courts and the legal profession which are necessary ingredients for the achievement of the end of combating corruption.
One of the identifiable weaknesses to date that came with the establishment of the DCEO is that for the past 13 years it has never been ‘independently audited’ and such audits given to the members of public or the parliament for scrutiny in order to evaluate its functional efficiency and the modalities of its governance.
The DCEO’s resources and every item in their budget and how the money is used must be beyond reproach.
There must be no secret fund aimed at selectively or arbitrarily investigating ‘so-called’ incidences of corruption, a lump-sum appropriation for which the institution is not accountable.
The institution must account for every cent because any unexplained fund for a law enforcement agency is extremely dangerous and may pose a threat to the institution’s credibility.
The efficiency of this organization has to be measured and the citizens have a right to know how much of the resources allocated to this institution are utilized for the benefit of combating crime generally and perhaps above all the honk of decay of corruption.
It is only after the assessment or vetting of this institution that we can speak as a country of the significant strides that we have made through this institution to combat corruption.
The only romantic report of a success story in combating corruption in this jurisdiction and which pre-dates the establishment of the entity in international circles was that of the prosecution of the executives of LHDA and several multinational companies.
But viewed from the other radar in a separate publication it was contended that the limited resources of a poverty-stricken kingdom were committed to the project for both investigation and prosecution at a huge and burdensome cost which ultimately led to the same difference as a huge chunk of the resources which were recovered were diverted to pay the legal fees of the prosecution team.
Given this context can it safely be termed as a success story? The success of combatting corruption need not be measured on the basis of catching the ‘big-fishes’ but rather on the basis of scaling down the generally corrupt public and private sectors.
The selective prosecution and investigation of persons characterised by legislation as Politically Exposed Persons is not per se, a good measure of success in combatting corruption.
I am inclined to state that given one’s professional experience as a legal practitioner, corruption is primarily increasing because there is a large-scale descent in the respect shown to the law enforcement institutions.
I regret to state perhaps reluctantly that the same applies with the Lesotho Mounted Police Service. This has clearly escalated the atmosphere of resentment to institutions such as the DCEO.
The laws which endow the institution of carte blanche powers to seize property through courts of law without notice to the suspects whilst admittedly made in the good spirit of combating accruals from criminal activity bears the potential of abuse and arbitrariness.
The recent innovations in legislation which have expanded the institutional powers of the DCEO to other public administrative institutions like the Lesotho Revenue Authority bear the potential threat of abuse as well.
A sour experience from this coordination is that in the past three or four years or so, prominent businesspersons in the country (those whose appellation has been legislatively interpreted as ‘Politically Exposed Persons’ and prominent businesspersons) lamented that the Lesotho Revenue Authority was fast disintegrating into a prosecuting authority instead of being a revenue collector.
The situation was so dire that the institution even went further to initiate a litigation against its administrative head – the Commissioner General on allegations of administrative tax offences coupled with economic offences – and quite significantly, and perhaps in yet another isolated example, the head of the apex court in this jurisdiction – the Court of Appeal of Lesotho – on allegations of administrative tax offences.
All these unchequered avenues explored by public administrative institutions bear the potential of being arbitrary especially if the agents of such institutions are not accountable.
This country has clearly witnessed an unwarranted ‘institutional arrogance’ in some institutions which effectively attracts the waning confidence of the ordinary members of the public.
From these legislative enactments, it can safely be concluded that whilst the mandate of these public administrative bodies are to combat corruption and or any other economic offences, there lies a potential threat when such institutions through their wayward agents can be tools of corruption in the elimination of political adversaries and those who are perhaps politically incorrect or those not favoured by those in power.
It would clearly be remiss of me if the notion of counter-productive institutional arrogance that is most likely to be cultivated from these overwhelming powers given to these institutions by recent legislations is not addressed.
It warrants emphasising that the DCEO or any other public administrative institution in this country is a subject of the law and the constitution and it must act or carry out its mandate in line with the supreme law of the land.
This shall help create a platform where law enforcement agents are not merely tools of intimidation but rather, an honourable profession with the sole aim of upholding the rule of law in this country.
Having spent a substantial portion of this article illustrating the shortcomings of law enforcement institutions, it is noteworthy of me to state categorically that the challenge facing this country is overwhelming.
There are unruly and menacing mobs whose prime motivation is to corruptly render the state bankrupt and perhaps ungovernable. It is only the dignity and professionalism of the DCEO and all the other law enforcement institutions that can clearly salvage the situation.
By: Monaheng Seeiso Rasekoai
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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.
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