IT’S not often that Muckraker braves the drive to her roots in Mafube. Were it not for her mother she would not bother to clumber the mountains to Qacha’s Nek.
Apart from her mother, the remaining relatives are uncles, aunts and their children who vehemently refuse to believe that Muckraker does not own a bank.
Yet each time she gathers the strength to make the trip there is always one refreshing memory she carries to the hustle and bustle of Maseru. It will linger on for days. And for that whole week Muckraker will have a spring in her step. Forget the breath-taking beauty of the villages, the pristine mountains, their fresh air and the authenticity of the smiles, Muckraker always looks forward to the sight of Thabo. Thabo who? It’s Thabo, the boy who jilted her heart months after she saw her first moon. He delivered the nasty letter, whose handwriting and sotho-english were beyond terrible, on a Friday afternoon.
There is something patently evil about people who dump their lovers on a Friday. Once dumped you cry the whole night into Saturday and squirm through into Sunday.
Anyone who breaks your heart on Friday is contriving to make you miss church on Sunday, the only day most of us have a tête-à-tête with our Maker.
That’s just mean.
“Our loving stops now. I am now denying you,” Thabo wrote. Peeved by the rude but almost ineligible missive, Muckraker hurtled to Thabo’s house, tear and chick embracing.
If the letter was an incompetent messenger perhaps Thabo should speak for himself without the interference of pen and paper, two things that had the power to spook the little moron.
There Thabo was perched on his mother’s stoop, occasionally letting out cruel chuckles as Muckraker begged him to reconsider.
“You won’t amount to anything Ausi,” he retorted after Muckraker had implored him with a long monologue punctuated with tears.
“You have knock knees and are too thin to compete with the ‘fit’ Lineo for my heart,” he added loudly enough for his approaching friends to hear his parting shot.
As it turned out, it was Thabo who didn’t amount to anything. Months later, he planted dough into Lineo’s oven and their schooling began instantly.
Now five pregnancies later Thabo is the headmaster of riffraff. They say if he is not nicking hoes and yokes he is doing odd jobs for pittances.
He has hit hard times. Meanwhile Muckraker has travelled the world, written insanely popular columns (This one and the other one across town) and worked several decent jobs.
She might not be living her dream but she has fared far much better than Thabo. There are many women with similar stories of heartbreaks that, with time, have been replaced by the gratification of watching the once haughty ex-lover writhing in poverty, and misery or stuck with some pathetic lover.
Never be shy to dine at the high table while your former lovers turn green with envy. In their feat of jealous and anger they will call you horrible names. Tell them you ‘doesn’t care’ (remember to credit Size Two for concocting that one).
The story of Thabo reminds Muckraker of the love affair between Mokola and Size Two that abruptly ended a few months ago.
Mokola served divorce papers on Size Two, demanding to remain in the matrimonial home (DC) and have sole custody of the children (DC supporters).
Size Two called an urgent pitso (special conference) where he influenced the villagers to force Mokola to load his things in a cart and leave their home.
As nifty as ever, Mokola did not take long to find another lover. Size Two then called a national pitso for the people to adjudicate over the dispute.
We all know what happened at that June 3 pitso. The people decided that Size Two was not only abusive to Mokola but he had molested the country as well.
Mokola, the jilted lover Size Two once described as a nonentity, is now Deputy Prime Minister. Now he sits in close proximity to the fire from which Size Two yanked him a few months ago. Size Two is nowhere near the fire.
He resides somewhere on the outskirts of the village, banished and condemned to the vagaries of Lesotho’s biting winter. He might never return.
Mokola has not said much since his vindication but those close him say he sometimes finds himself humming a mischievous tune.
“Shout out to my ex/You’re really quite the man/ You made my heart break and that made who I am/ Here’s to my ex, hey, look at me now/ Well, I’m, I’m all the way up/ I swear you’ll never, you’ll never bring be down”/
“Oh, I deleted all your pics/ Then blocked your number from my phone/ Yeah, Yeah, you took all you could get/ But you ain’t getting this love no more/ ’Cause now I’m living so legit/ Even though you broke my heart in two, baby/ But I snapped right back, I’m so brand new, baby/ Boy, read my lips, I’m over you, over you, uh . . .”
Those words are from the girl group Little Mix’s hit song Shout out to My Ex. If you don’t know that group you are just unreasonable or the 1990s have a dead man’s grip on your taste. Mokola has moved with the times.
That’s why he correctly predicted that the people were pissed with Size Two and his battalion. He married above his class, and prudently so.
Size Two wedded way below his class, with disastrous penalties. He now sits on the opposition benches next to DJ Waters, his sullen spouse.
A slow mind is a burden to the body that carries it. It is not for nothing that security forces around the world now prefer smart people to dunderheads whose only qualification is to run faster than others. Security work — whether military or police — now depends on acumen rather than brute force.
The police officer who beats confessions out of suspects died in the early 19oos. The soldiers who carried menacing guns and thrived on fear expired in the 1950s.
That is why Muckraker is incensed to the core by two sadistic videos that emerged last week. In one video men are seen bashing people at a night club.
You can see that these are empty heads on steroids doing what they are trained to do: to use as little of their brains as possible.
In another equally detestable video men clad in police uniform are seen forcing dozens of men to roll like logs.
One chubby officer seems to be thoroughly enjoying himself as he partakes in this hedonistic act.
Those who don’t roll faster are clobbered with sticks. Muckraker will confess that she found the rolling part amusing in a rather dark way.
There is something humorous with police officers taking pleasure in behaving like bullies. The idea that people who cannot catch pickpockets in stopong could be so busy on such mundane activities is as comical as it is depressing.
Yet we should be disgusted because as they pleasure themselves with watching bearded men rolling on the ground they are actually earning money from the taxpayers.
The video at the club is just appalling because unlike in the police one those thugs intended to cause grievous bodily harm and not simply ridicule. You can see from the way they swing their sticks.
Both videos point to what is patently wrong with us. You can bet your last coin that the selectively garrulous civil organisations will not scream about the two incidents.
We live in times where the standards of accountability shift based on who is in power.