A long time ago Muckraker lived at a malaeneng in Thamae.
Three months after moving in women in the compound started complaining that their lotions were missing.

There was a rumour that one of the ill-mannered rats in the compound had acquired a taste for lotion and was nicking it with gusto. You could not put anything past those cheeky rats.

They were perverts that could mate right in the yard as children watched. We had the kind of rats that could wink at you as they dragged your only knickers away.

So Muckraker thought it was possible those scoundrels had something to do with the missing lotion. Others said one of the families in the complex had a clever thokolosi they sent on lotion thieving errands.

The only problem was that such a thokolosi sounded useless because it should have been stealing money, not cheap lotion.
Maybe it had a fetish for lotion.

Some of the gossiping machines whispered that Muckraker, the latest tenant, was the one who was smearing herself with stolen lotion. After all, they opined in devious undertones, she was the only unmarried woman in the compound but always looked shiny.

Those cruel accusations however died down a few weeks later when the thief, whether a cunning rat or a skilled thokolosi, emptied Muckraker’s bottle of Dawn lotion.

As you can imagine, this Qacha’s Nek girl was inconsolable for that was the only thing that soothed her ashen and hard Mafube skin.
Now she had to use cooking oil until the next payday.

So still irritated, Muckraker walked into a Frasers’ supermarket to buy a gallon of paint which she poured into all Dawn lotion containers she could get and neatly displayed in her rickety wardrobe.

It was not long before the thief decided it was time to fasten some Usain Bolt legs on one of Muckraker’s bottles. And so Muckraker patiently waited to see which women in the compound had a painted face.

The answer came on a hot Friday afternoon when Puseletso bolted out of her room, screaming. Her eyebrows were covered in white oil paint. She had also smeared her hair with the paint (that is what people do with stolen goods).
She looked like a ghost. The lotion rat or thokolosi had been found. Justice had to be done.

Some insisted that she should be stoned while others said she should be frog-marched to the police station.

Muckraker was not interested in all that. All she wanted was her lotion.
In any case, it would have been evil and disproportionate to stone the poor woman over lotion.

There was no justice to be achieved through such cruelty.
Going to the police was not an option because Puseletso was having hanky-panky sessions with one of the senior officers there. It would have been awkward for the officer to admit that all those times his girlfriend was glowing because of stolen lotions.

So playing both prosecutor and judge, Muckraker delivered the verdict. Thieving Pusee had to buy a bottle of Dawn lotion for every woman in the compound.

With her face still covered in the evidence, Puseletso dashed to Frasers and came with cartons of Dawn lotion which she handed to her fuming neighbours. Justice had been done.

A few days later she was evicted together with her long fingers. That’s what we call an out of court settlement: Small matters amicably resolved between the suspect and the victim.

Now imagine Muckraker’s horror last week when she heard that Mootsi Lehata, a former minister and MP, had sweet-talked his alleged rape victim to withdraw the case that had been in the courts for almost a year. Mohlolo!
The wretched deal is that he will build his victim a house and pay M1000 in child support.

So Lehata is off the hook because he will provide food and shelter to his victim. Lehata is avoiding jail because he agreed to take care of the child sired through violent and criminal sex.

By endorsing this agreement the court and the prosecution is saying: we know what you did last January was horrendous but we can cut you some slack if you meet your civil obligation of taking care of your child and the victim.

And just like that, Lehata remains free to perambulate our streets while touting himself as a law abiding citizen.

If you think justice has been done here then your brain is the size of the full stop at the end of this sentence (.).

Let’s not hear the daft rationalisation that such cases happen every day. Lehata is not a herd boy. He is no common villager. He is not just a male Mosotho man of Maseru, as our lawyers would say.

He is an influential and possibly moneyed politician.
Soon after the scandal was reported in newspapers Muckraker started searching the streets for Lehata.

She was shouting: “Lehata! Lehata! Lehata! Where are you! You little man of little shame!”

If you see Lehata, please tell his long ears that Aunty Muckraker wants to have a word with him.

She just wants to sit his unrepentant bums down and remind him of what he did last January.

The lesson will be brief: “keep your willy away from our children. Negotiate hanky-panky with people of your age. And if your tongue is in the habit of failing you like Moses’ then just buy the pleasure. They say it’s M30 on the streets. You, of all people, should know the price by now.”

But let no one tell you that names don’t matter. Mootsi means someone whose actions in life negatively affect other people. Lehata means a liar. Muckraker didn’t invent that! If it sticks and stings then so be it.

Muckraker is no legal fundi but she knows when someone is urinating on our justice system. Lehata has done just that, with the enthusiastic help of the prosecution and the courts.

You don’t need to have passed near Justice Kananelo Mosito’s class at the National University of Lesotho to see that those people have pulled a middle finger at our justice system.

This world functions on common-sense, not legal jargon. Let’s dig in, then.
There are two parallel systems in the court, civil and criminal. The civil cases are between individuals, organisations and companies.

If you sue your landlord for uncollected sewage you use the civil route.
The same applies if you sue for debts.
A criminal case is when the state is prosecuting you for crimes like fraud, corruption, assault, burglary, cattle rustling and rape. The prosecution will be representing the King who is referred to as Rex in court papers (Rex is Latin for the king).

You are being prosecuted because your crime is against the State. Rape is a crime against the State, which is run by the King.
So when Lehata was on trial he was not facing charges against his alleged victim but for violating state laws.

Given this obvious fact, it is clear that Lehata was not at liberty to negotiate with his alleged victim to settle the matter out of court.

What Lehata did was to offer a civil solution to a patently criminal case. In other words, he killed a criminal case by pelting it with civil stones.

The criminal and civil systems are parallel. It will always be Lehata’s civil obligation to provide for the child he sired out of the alleged rape. That he is building a house and providing for the child, his civil duties, doesn’t mean he should not face the wrath of the law.

If Lehata’s case is now the modus operandi it means all those convicted of rape can get out of jail by simply promising to build houses and feed their victims. It gets worse.

It means all the soldiers accused of heinous crimes can simply compensate their alleged victims and walk.

This is not and will never be the spirit of our criminal justice system because the idea of a conviction goes way beyond appeasing the victim.
Jails are there to remove criminal elements from society so they don’t inflict further pain on fellow citizens.

They act as a deterrent to those who might be inclined to commit crimes. Retribution for crimes against society is the cornerstone of the prison system. The logic is that after serving your time you will be rehabilitated back into the society.

But obviously this doesn’t seem to apply to the likes of Lehata who can simply flash their money to avoid jail.

It is telling that this deal was made without the state’s involvement.
So a poor orphan struggling to fend for a child born out of rape was negotiating with the person who violated her.

Lehata had a lawyer and she didn’t have any. Lehata has money and she is broke. Lehata has power and she is just a poor girl yet to recover from the trauma of rape.

You can imagine the patronising conversation between the two.
A discussion between an aggressor and a victim is not based on cordiality but fear.

You see the unfairness of this negotiation in what the woman was promised: M1000 per month and a house.

The house is not even defined in clear terms. It could just be a little hovel somewhere in the village.

Lehata is the one who decides what house he wants to build for the poor woman and her child.

As for the money, we can only say this is how lowly Lehata views her alleged victim: a little cheap girl who can be silenced with ten hundred rand notes.
This is Lesotho: a land of thugs who rely on the state machinery to bend the rules.

Instead of being flabbergasted the prosecution was ululating. The court was cheering Lehata on when it should have been telling him to find a comfortable place in hell to roast slowly.

In all this we should be asking where the so-called human rights organisations, especially those that deal with women, are hiding. But we should not bother for we know they are good for nothing donor money-munching nincompoops.

They fight for no one but their pockets. Political zealots masquerading as human rights prefects.
Where are the lawyers? Sshhhhhhhhh!
Don’t mention those thieving merchants if you want to eat your papa ka lepu in peace tonight.

The politicians will not fight for the girl because they too are probably cutting or have cut similar deals with their victims. Their libido is legendary.
The female politicians will not utter a word because most of them are part of this system built on tokenism. They want to warm their parliament benches in peace, drifting in and out of dreamland while occasionally rubbing their loaded tummies.

They like their make-up more than the people they represent.
The Lehata case is too hot to handle. It requires that they use a little of their brains, something they forgot since they were elected or were sneaked in through the dodgy PR lists.

How about the thousands of politically active women who are not in parliament? Ah, those are just good at gyrating and singing at rallies.
Busy winking at senior politicians and offering themselves to be used as pawns in ruthless political games from which they get nothing but crumbs.
We should be looking to the old women of this country to be pissed at this scandal. No! They are too busy chasing hopose to worry about such important matters.

Too many old woozy (puza) faces in our villages.
They could be attending some Thursday church group to decide who is going to clean the church this week. They are busybodies, those mothers in uniform. They sing, gossip, pray a little and then gossip some more (In that order).

They are more concerned with what to get the pastor for his birthday than the welfare of the children in their villages.

Where are the youth, you may ask. Ask their uncles whose names are Maluti Lager and 4th Street. You cannot think straight if your aunties have names like Savannah, Hunter’s Dry, Four Cousins, Flying Fish, Castle, Black Label (The tosh, not the whiskey), Heineken and Amstel. Your uncles and aunties are stoned.

Is this not what the Feselady should be screaming about?
Well, why worry about St Stephens after Form E? It’s Beijing all the way these days.

Nka! Ichuuuuuuuuuuu!

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