Now that he is gone, Muckraker thinks it is time to ask what is it that Uncle Tom will take back home. Leabua Jonathan took his cattle home.
Major General Justin Lekhanya has his cows. Size Two left with his camels. Ntsu Mokhehle never had much liking for material things.
What will Uncle Tom take back to Abia?
His Chinese friend will not agree to be carted to Abia.
The silly boys around him won’t be joining him. He is no longer relevant to them. They have their own problems to ponder.
He will pack his yellowbone in a bag and return home.
There is no way the Feselady will return to Abia in broad daylight. The shame is too much to bear. She will have to be sneaked into the village in a Ha re eeng Thaba-Tseka.
She will wake up in the wee hours of the morning and start sweeping the yard as if she has always stayed there. Neighbours will chuckle. The chief she once insulted will snare at her. Welcome to the people sister! In Abia you are a subject.
You can however be sure that the Feselady will be bored out of her mind without the international trips, power and aides to tend to her every whim.
She is used to drama. She is used to being the centre of attention.
In the village she will be just another ’Mannyeo.
The village ladies will not gossip with her.
She might start visiting the library but that will be a disaster. You can imagine the Feselady walking into the library, heading to the counter, slamming a book down and screaming at the librarian. “This is the worst book I have ever read. It has no plot and too many characters,” she will say.
The librarian will look up and calmly remarks: “Ah, so you are the one who took our phonebook? Mehlolo! Now you see what your Form B is doing to you?”
Never in the history of this country has a woman risen and fallen with such stunning speed. The loquacious yellowbone from Mokhotlong has fallen with a thud.
It’s too late to go back to school. Too early to mend bridges. Too early to show some contrition. And so she will pretend that all is well (say that with an Indian accent, please) while wearing a plastic smile that belies her fear.
But it’s not too early to see a shrink. The woman needs it because a sudden loss of power can be traumatic. She will be suffering from what is called Post-Good Life Disorder (PGLD).
Or PAO for Post Arrogance Disorder. From now it’s Muvhango all the way.
Someone must tell her to watch Lockdown, a jail drama.
Without power you feel naked and exposed. For the Feselady it’s even worse because she was in the business of spanking and insulting people in town.
Now the woman she bashed at a local hospital might want a rematch.
The playing field has been levelled. The Feselady can no longer fight while perched on her bodyguard shoulders.
The waiter she harangued at a lodge in Butha-Buthe might be calling her with the pinky finger. She must be saying Tloho ‘Me` as she rolls up her sleeves and tucks her dress into her undies. Tloho ngoan’aka, sunyetsa, u nyoke tšehlana ena.
Forget the economic policy that Majoro will cobble up in the next few days.
Worry not about the jobs he will promise to create.
For now Muckraker is not even concerned about the cabinet which she knows will be just mishmash of some old and new faces.
Her only wish is that the government grants her just five minutes to beat up the Feselady for her shenanigans. This will not be gender-based violence but a sister disciplining another sister. A free lesson to every woman who will one day find herself swaggering in the corridors of power with a ring thrust on her finger.
The Feselady should have her ears wringed. She was a nuisance. She abused borrowed power with such vim that you would think she owned it.
By the time you read this Dr Moeketsi Majoro will be soaked in saliva from bootlickers. He must find a raincoat, pronto, or the stinking drool will keep pounding him.
Muckraker sincerely hopes the man can swim because there is a Tsunami of saliva coming his way. Such is the nature of Lesotho’s politics of the belly.
Tongues are always in overdrive. People who called him a nonentity a few weeks ago are now harassing him with their shameless tongues.
Not even Covid-19 can stop this unhygienic politics of bootlicking.
You have to feel for the man. The same long tongues that were licking Thabane are now all over him.
Imagine being brushed by the same tongue that was glued to the toxic Feselady for years. The nasty rash that comes with it.
The itchiness of such tongues.
Now is not the time to teach Majoro to avoid hanger-on jostling for his attention.
He has seen it all. The boys at the State House had their tongues bruised.
He is also smart enough to know that when the end has come no amount to legal gymnastics will save a leader. For weeks we have watched Thabane twisting and turning as he tried to delay his exit.
His spin doctors said he will only go in July. It was as if he had control over his fate.
Then we had mumbo jumbo from pseudo political analysts who tried to teach us about politics.
Enter the Attorney General with his damp squib of a legal opinion that read like it was written by a paralegal.
“Unless I haven’t read the provision well enough there seems to me..,” said the AG in one of the statements in the opinion.
He was giving legal advice about a constitutional matter but admitting that he might not have read the law well. No conviction whatsoever.
In the end it was clear that someone was probably been looking over his shoulder as he wrote that embarrassing opinion.
If this is the last legal opinion the AG will give to the government then he has soiled his reputation. Henceforth First-Year law students will use it as an example of how not to write a legal opinion.
We also had a battalion of nincompoops insisting on ingratiating themselves with Thabane and the Feselady even when it was apparent that their time was over.
One day Fako Moshoeshoe will have to answer why he thought it prudent to dismount a fit four-legged horse and clamber a two-legged on.
The same applies to all those who were ululating for Uncle Tom as he clung on to power with his nails. Nyoe, nyoe Uncle Tom has nine lives. My foot!
Blah, blah Uncle is a scheming politician. Well, he schemed himself out of power.
The lesson from all this is that most people are not as clever as they claim to be.
There was never any doubt, even to pigs, that Uncle Tom was on his way out.
Nka! Ichuuuuuuuuuuu!
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