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Muckraker

Meet the real bombs

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Hooray, the army is sending soldiers to help deal with the insurgency in Mozambique.
Muckraker thinks this is the best thing that has ever happened to our largely idle military.
For too long, they have pretended to be busy with something they called “internal threats”.

Because they have nothing much to do, they have deliberately stretched the definition of “internal threats” to mean almost anything.
They have been busy chasing cattle rustlers in the veld.
Excessively clobbering goat thieves in the name of fighting crime. Spanking people who violate lockdown regulations.
They even have a rehabilitation centre for gangsters. When there are no people to beat, some of them get up to mischief.
All this boils down to an army that has nothing serious to do.

One that has never seen real combat and whose members are itching for some action. You see this in the bulging tummies some of them have amassed.
Some should be Sumo wrestlers instead of soldiers. Muckraker swears some will faint if asked to jog around the barracks.
Little wonder their football team is pathetic.
The deployment will show our army what an ‘internal threat’ looks like.
After this operation, they will stop this nauseating business of deliberately confusing a fart in the streets of Maseru for a bomb blast.

Only when they deal with an enemy tanker will they understand that a 9mm is a toy gun to be handled by Molibeli’s people, not soldiers. It takes an encounter with a grenade launcher to realise that the army has no business playing ‘social worker’ on gangsters.
Upon their return from Mozambique, the Commander should ask them to write compositions about their experience. It doesn’t have to be anything complicated. Just a few lines about the years they will never forget. More like those high school compositions about the day you will never forget.
You can imagine the fantastic stories that will come out.

“We were sleeping when we heard boom, boom, boom. It was a bomb. Real bomb that can kill motho. I was so sacred that I did urine on myself. I run for cover behind bush but bomb has blown the bush. I jump into whole and start crying. I pray to balimo to save me. I see big tanker coming for me. I faint for fear. Bo Ntate, we have been playing here. I now know real war.”
Another one: “It was sunny Monday when attack start. Me, I was drinking team. Then I hear people say take cover, take cover, take cover. I tell Khotso to find my gun but he says find it yourself.

I say I am your boss and he say you are my boss when chasing cattle thieves in Qacha, not in this war in Mozambique. I say eish, you are right Ntate. Let’s run.
Or this one: “Me cannot say much becoz that war is bad. Very bad. All I can say is that I see real war.”
But jokes banter aside, Muckraker wishes our soldiers well. This is a noble cause.

Nka! Ichuuuuuuuuuuu!

muckraker.post@gmail.com

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Muckraker

The not so noble Ashraf

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English has never been our mother. It abandons us in times of trouble, especially when cornered. The best time to judge a person’s eloquence in English is when they are in distress. Walim Ashraf, the man accused of stealing M7.4 million, lost his English bundles last week when he was caught in a blue lie.

His bail hearing was going well until a DCEO investigator told the prosecutor that he was emitting lies with a straight face. He had told the court that his three children and wife were in South Africa. He even added that children were schooling in South Africa. That sounded plausible and the court appeared to have taken his word for it until the prosecutor announced that his wife and three children were in fact in India. Bingo!

Caught in the lie, Ashraf mumbled an apology before telling the court that “it was a slip of the tongue”.
In other words, his tongue has slipped and called South Africa India.

At that moment, Ashraf believed that claiming that your family is in South Africa when they are in India is a “slip of the tongue”.

The phrase he was looking for is: “I am a pathetic liar”. A slip of the tongue is a minor mistake in speech, not a fictitious relocation of your family from India to South Africa. Muckraker will not pass judgement on his charges.

Suffice to say Ashraf is an Arabic name meaning ‘most honourable one’ or ‘very noble’. Tongues that claim to have slipped when they are lying are not so noble.

Nka! Ichuuuuuuuuuuuu

muckracker.post@gmail.com

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Muckraker

Its squeaky bum time

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Uncle Sam and his leadership should not be surprised that the opposition is now grabbing them by the collar. They played into the government’s hands by making hasty and emotional decisions.

The suspension of the three MPs has now triggered a backlash that might topple the government.
The opposition is smelling blood and getting ready to pounce.

Even if Uncle Sam’s government survives the next storm, the opposition will keep coming. They are possessed by the spirit of destruction.
The next few years will be tsunami after tsunami.
Nothing motivates a politician more than the prospect of finishing off a wounded opponent.
Muckraker is tempted to say the RFP still has a chance to regroup and fight from one corner but that would be false. The trust has been broken and the wounds are too deep.

Those who have been suspended want revenge. Mediation is a waste of time. Nothing is ever forgiven and forgotten in politics.
Muckraker’s humble advice to Uncle Sam and his people is that they should stock up on painkillers because there are more pounding headaches on the way.
Keep some pills at home, office, office toilet, back pocket, handbag, wallet and even bra.

Mapesela will not rest until he is back in government and proudly messing up things.
He is beating war drums.
Uncle Sam and his people had better learn to play dirty because this is a rough game. Bones will be broken and bodies bruised.

Nka! Ichuuuuuuuuuuuu

muckracker.post@gmail.com

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Muckraker

Rough riders

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Spare a prayer for Uncle Sam as he walks on the glowing coals that is Lesotho’s politics. Call your prophets, fake and real, because the demons of Lesotho’s politics are at the gates.

Bring both fire and water because these are not Mickey Mouse demons. Leave the pigs out of this one, I beg. We still need fariki after exorcising the evil spirits. As usual, you need the powers of a potent wizard to decipher why the opposition is gathering wood for a pyre to burn both the government and its leader. That it’s such a hotchpotch betrays the fact that the reasons are contrived rather than real.

Even if they are real, none of them justifies toppling a government so soon.
And none of the opposition leaders could claim, without the usual dose of embellishment, that the so-called ‘reasons’ have come from the people. There is no scale to weigh the people’s disgust at Uncle Sam and his people.

There is no reason to pretend that those plotting to whip Uncle Sam out of office are doing it for the people who voted less than a year ago. This is just another group of excitable and power-mongering zealots cooking up reasons to justify their attempt to instigate a power grab.

You hear from their flawed logic when they exuberantly claim that it is their right to bring a no-confidence vote against the government.
They pull out that trump card even when no one has accused them of any criminality. They do it to sanitise and deodorise their brazen usurpation of the people’s power.
It’s their way of justifying why a group of less than 50 people who lost an election now has both the power and the nerve to topple a government supported by thousands of Basotho. Oops, that’s a lie. This a decision of less than 10 political leaders who are now shopping around for other MPs to support their decision.
Yes, toppling a government in parliament is not illegal. Yes, the opposition can do it. But the pertinent question is whether this is what Basotho want and it’s good for Lesotho.

Who has told the politicians that this is what the people want? Who did they consult, when and how?
Yes, Uncle Sam is fumbling and dithering. Yes, some of his ministers behave like rabbits caught in headlights on the Main North 1 Road. True, some of the appointments stink of nepotism.
But all these are nothing new or outrageous. We have seen worse from the very people now screaming their lungs out. It’s not as if the opposition now has a low tolerance for tosh.

After all, they are the very masters of tosh. This is not about service delivery or some transgressions.
This is about power and resources. Not power to serve Basotho. Not resources to share with Basotho. It is about the power to shove in their armpits while they munch the resources. That is why they keep telling us what Uncle Sam has done wrong instead of saying why they think they will do better.
They are not saying they will screw us softly this time around. No promise to go easy on the looting. Nothing about limiting the number of rats in the granary. They don’t even have the decency to promise to move from F to E.

As far as they are concerned, we just have to stand by and watch while they kick out Uncle Sam and then cheer as they march back to do more of the same. This is the contempt they have for the people. We elect governments that MPs have the power to topple willy-nilly while claiming to be acting on our behalf. We have been screwed before but these are rough riders. Phew!

Nka! Ichuuuuuuuuuuuu

muckracker.post@gmail.com

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