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Muckraker

Let them run

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UNLESS Size Two comes out of hiding Muckraker will soon be making a report to the police. The man has been missing since he was beaten on June 3.

It is troubling that since his crushing defeat at the polls Size Two has not been seen in public or uttered a word.
Is he just on voicemail or he took an unplanned holiday?
Is he in Tsoelike, Roma or some hole somewhere in the wilderness?
For more than a week, now Muckraker has been searching for the idiom-spitting comrade.
Some say he wants to lick his wounds in peace while others have opined that he is too embarrassed to face his supporters who are equally inconsolable.

Both theories are probably correct. The “wound licking” theory is plausible because men like Size Two don’t want to show their anguish in public.

He has pretended to be invincible for years. It’s a charade he would want to maintain at all cost.
The idea that he is too ashamed to face his supporters also holds water because for three months he was promising thunder and fury.
He said he was going to chew the opposition and spit it out on June 3.

Remember the “I doesn’t care” gaffe that made him the butt of mischievous jokes on social media.
Size Two was so sure he was going to win that he probably could not resist the temptation to brag to his camels in Qacha’s Nek. When one of them ogled at him like it was about to pass some message Size Two laughed loud.

“Poor animal, I know you want to wish me luck,” he said as he rubbed the camel.
“Now, let me make something clear to you tall animal of Muammar Gaddafi. I don’t need luck. I am the one. The only one! The people love me to bits.”

Well, the election came and they showed that they loved him so much that they let him go. They say if you truly love someone you must be willing to let them go.

True love doesn’t force and trap. The people said fly away Size Two, just fly away.

Now he is crawling under rocks and bushes while hoping no one is cruel enough to remind him of his words during the campaign trail.
But the man from Tsoelike need not wail and mourn too much for his retirement was long overdue anyway.
His return in 2015 was a mistake necessitated by the DC’s failure to have a frank discussion on the succession issue.
Now that Mokola has found a way to be a leader of a political party and deputy prime minister without grovelling to the hawks in the DC, Size Two can silently retreat to his village.

Muckraker is sure there are things he has been putting off for years as he tried to manage the government.
There are memoirs to write, English novels to be translated into concise Sesotho, grandchildren to entertain with folktales, and the camels to feed.
There are villagers and relatives who want to know why he has been aloof since his political star started glowing. His cattle, goats and chickens have missed him dearly.

Muckraker’s only request to Size Two is that he takes good care of himself. First, he must seek the services of a psychologist to help him settle into the new life out of power.

When you are used to having your bags carried and bed made, living without help can be a daunting task. Size Two has to get used to a life of doing things on his own.

But perhaps the biggest adjustment he has to make is that of living without bootlickers.
For nearly two decades he was sounded by pathetic brownnosers who saw him as their meal ticket. There are some who could move mountains and mop dams for him just so they could remain under his table to grab some crumbs.
You know the nonentities that have no other claim to fame apart from hanging around in the leader’s pockets. The nobodies who see it as their lifelong vocation to sing the leader’s praises.

Size Two will not find such ilk when he gets back to Tsoelike. The villagers will welcome him back, and then get back to their lives.
For the first time in more than 20 years Size Two will have to attend village pitsos to hear fellow villagers complain about roads, clinics and diseases.

Out of government, he can no longer tell the villagers he has to hurry back to Maseru to attend a summit or a cabinet meeting.

You would think in this moment of despair the congress zealots would take a cue from Size Two to retreat into their shells. Hell no!
Some just won’t zip it. DJ Waters has adamantly refused to bow out quietly. Even as the results were being announced the man from Mahobong started running his mouth.

First he tried to scare people with a dead snake. He said Uncle Tom would seek revenge on the soldiers who had made him pack his Ha re eeng Thaba-Tseka.

Where he got the vim to utter such words we may never know.
He said the congress parties had to protect soldiers who put their “heads on the block” for them to return to power.
While people were still trying to make sense of that howler, DJ Waters came back with another stinker a few days later.
This time he was not up to his scare tactics but was tacitly pleading for a backyard room in the new coalition government.
“There is no need for the removal of the existing government in office as we all agree that in order for Lesotho to be stable there is a need for a government of national unity (GNU),” Metsing said at a press conference.

DJ Waters just doesn’t smell the coffee. He wouldn’t know a defeat until it hits him in the face.
Losers don’t get to suggest the make-up of a government unless they are invited to do so. They only speak when spoken to.
The whole GNU suggestion smacks of hypocrisy. DJ Water should have suggested it in 2015 if he knew it is what was needed for the country to be stable.

He could have suggested it in 2016 when it became apparent that Lesotho was still unstable. He could have offered that solution this year when Mokola started a fire under Size Two’s behind.

Now he has neither the leverage nor the legitimacy to suggest anything to the new government.
That he is doing so shows that he is either an opportunist or is suffering from a bout of selective amnesia.
Either of those or he urgently needs professional help to deal with his loss. Muckraker has no energy to suggest a shrink.
Get well soon papa.

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Muckraker

Maretlane’s dish rubbish

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He hasn’t learned in 17 years. 

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

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

Nka! Ichuuuuuuuuuuuu
muckracker.post@gmail.com

 

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Muckraker

The market of rascals

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

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

 

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Muckraker

The Market of nonsense

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

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

 

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