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Muckraker: Poor Lucy

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EVEN those with tummies brimming with jealousy will admit that Lucy Liphafa, the long suffering Auditor General, is a stunner.
She is a smashing beauty with a glowing smile that can pacify even the most restless baby.
In her heydays, so goes a rumour, village mothers would clamour to have her as a babysitter because they were sure that their babies would shush while they work in the fields.
What makes hers a compelling story is that she has a good head on her shoulders too.
That is rare in a country teeming with empty heads hawking their looks, hoping that some dimwit would be dazzled enough to push them up the ladder or append their signature to a nuptial certificate.

You know those loud and vain characters that climb on everything they lean on like bean plants.
Lucy has reached the pinnacle through hard work and effort.

That is why it is gulling to watch her being subjected to relentless witchcraft by governments. Witchcraft is when you appoint someone to a job you neither respect nor give a hoot about.
As auditor general Lucy is supposed to be one of the most respected and dreaded officials in government. Yet she is a butt of cruel jokes in government corridors.
That’s because her annual audit reports are quickly consigned to the nearest bin.

Lucy will work hard to verify transactions, pinpoint dubious deals, expose fraud and name those with their paws in the cookie jar but nothing will change.
So while Lucy screams her head off the chariots of incompetency, thievery, indolence and mediocrity march on with unbridled gusto.

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Many civil servants consider her lucid reports minor irritants that should not be allowed to interfere with their core business of thieving and snoozing on the job.
Lucy will expose the rot and make recommendations but they will continue to loot state funds hand over fist and pee on financial regulations.
That’s precisely because Lucy’s reports have never warranted much attention from the government. They pay her to produce audit reports they treat with brazen contempt.
For years she has warned of a battalion of hungry rats within the government vaults but no one has been listening.

She has told us that there are some people who deliberately confuse the government’s kitty for their piggy banks but we laugh off her concerns.
Lucy has pleaded with government officials to cuff their hands when it comes to state funds but others are, instead, praying for additional pairs of hands.
The result is that our finances are a horrible mess no one is prepared to clean.

Each government pretends that it wants to clean the muck but ends up being swallowed by it.
The state’s finances are a sewage pond that sucks in any government that wants to clean it.

Lucy gets top marks for her ability to smell the tosh in government offices. She however scores zero for her naivety. You see, any other accountant would have pulled the middle finger on the government and hit the road at the speed of a Greyhound (the dog, not the bus).
Yet Lucy keeps bashing her immaculate face against a wall, hoping that the government will see that her work matters.

She must be a stoic optimist to think someone will take her reports seriously.
Muckraker has some sisterly advice for Sister Lucy.
Moratoua Lucy, it’s time for you to have mercy on yourself.

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Don’t bother writing those reports because your masters don’t give a rat’s behind what you say. There comes a time when a sister has to surrender. This is the time for you.
This business of working with so much verve as if your salary comes in the MCC’s rubbish truck will haunt you when you retire.
After 60 you will feel your bones aching and head pounding. They have to because you have subjected them to so much abuse as you perambulated government offices to interview slow minds and look for non-existent invoices, receipts and delivery notes.

You will age faster than makeup can sort out, my sister.
The problem is that you will not be able to justify your spectacular aging because no one will remember how hard you worked.
After toiling on this thankless job you will realise that work done is zero. You will not be able to tell people what your hard work amounted to because there will be none.
And at the rate at which the finances are bungled, you will find it embarrassing to remind people that you were once the auditor general.
The best you can do now is to stop this mundane business of writing new reports every year.

Simply keep a template to which you change the figures every year.
You can make up the figures because no one really cares to read the reports apart from a few bored journalists.
Most journalists don’t even understand what you mean when you talk about bank reconciliations, surcharge and ledgers.

Even if you only change the cover page of the report the journalists will not notice because they think with their fingers.

There was pandemonium in Mafube when Muckraker lost one of her grandfather’s goats. Within minutes villagers had scattered into the mountains in search of the little animal.
And a few hours later the goat thief was being spanked by the elders.
It did not take long for him to start singing.

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He brought the goat the next morning, complete with its two ears and four legs.
The lesson: things don’t just vanish.
The only thing that vanishes is a fart but even that can be traced to the source if you act quickly.

Yet the police are telling us that Makarabo Mojakhomo, a whole woman, just evaporated from a police station.
Muckraker knows that a police officer will spend a sleepless night if he loses a M10 note.
He will rummage through the house until he finds it.

Muckraker has never picked a lost M5 coin at a police station.
But we are being told that a whole woman disappeared at a police station. We could be rolling with laughter were this not a serious matter.
Muckraker is still waiting for the punch line to this sick joke.

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Muckraker

Jackals are hunting

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Cheeseman’s recording of the conversation might border on the criminal but that doesn’t matter to those who have been looking for a stick to spank Molelle.

They have been waiting for this moment and are seizing it with both hands.

You can hear the excitement in their voices as they discuss Molelle’s impending downfall. Knorx’s misery has triggered a collective orgasm.

Watch them now as they hunt in packs like jackals.

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Even those who sang Molelle’s praises a few weeks ago are queuing to lynch him.

We are masters at kicking those who have fallen from grace.

The Law Society of Lesotho has been startled from years of slumber to race out of its bed with a long sjambok in hand.

They have written a letter to Uncle Sam pretending to have discovered, through a “whistleblower”, that Molelle was appointed the DCEO boss without being admitted as a legal practitioner in Lesotho.

It’s unclear why they needed a ‘whistleblower’ to discover something in their records for years. Muckraker suspects they always knew but were either too timid to say or waiting for this moment.

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They are saying it now to give the impression that they sneaked in a kick when Molelle was being spanked out of office. It’s a desperate scramble for relevance.

By claiming that they didn’t know Molelle was appointed the DG without being admitted as a legal practitioner the law society is exposing itself as a proudly incompetent organisation.

That much is clear from their brazen admission that they needed a ‘whistleblower’ to whisper to them something on their notice board or drawer.

Muckraker is amused by the battalion pretending to be irritated by what Molelle’s mouth said about Bro Richard, Sister Majara and Uncle Sam. They are borrowing offence as if it’s them who were labelled idiots or satane.

Bro Richard, Sister Majara and Uncle Sam are capable of getting irritated on their own without prodding and instigation from self-hired mourners, chancers and bootlickers.

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Molelle himself knows what is supposed to happen in the next few days.

He can only extricate himself from this mess by proving that the audio clips were manufactured and his voice is either AI-generated or from someone who can expertly imitate him.

Nka! Ichuuuuuuuuuuu!

muckraker.post@gmail.com

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Pressing the Knorx Stereo

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As she listened to Mollele’s audio clips Muckraker could hear a man devoted to waffling his way to an abrupt end to his tenure as the DCEO boss.

Cheeseman only had to keep poking him with cunning instigations. It was as if Cheeseman knew which buttons to press for Knorx’s stereo to keep playing his songs. And he wasn’t using a remote control. He was right there pressing the brown Tempest. Muckraker is unsure if Cheeseman danced to the Knorx hits but is certain he enjoyed himself.

Press: “Satane”. Press: “Idiots”. Press: “This case”.

Press: “Oh, yes that case”. Press: “The DPP this and that”. Press: “Blah, blah, blah and blah”.

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Cheeseman was playing Knorx like DJ Boots on the decks.

At some point you hear that Cheeseman was no longer playing his favourite hits but requests from people who had given him a list of songs before he met Knorx.

Cheeseman’s motive for recording their conversation doesn’t matter now.

It matters now who got the audio clips, snitched and leaked. It all boils down to what he said and to whom he said it.

Molelle would still have been in trouble even if he had been heard saying those words while in his shower. He put himself in that position by allowing his mouth to go wild.

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He should have kept those thoughts locked in his mind until uttering them had no consequences for him. They are words you only mention as history: “Eish, I used to work with devils and idiots”.

Muckraker is not saying he should have never said those words now. Of course, he could have driven out of Maseru to find a mountain to tell those things.

If a molisana had secretly recorded his chat with the mountain, Knorx would have said what he tells his ancestors is his business. He could have also claimed he would have gone bonkers if he had not told someone or something about his bosses.

Many have a boss they believe to be a moron or evil. Yet they keep their mouth shut about such truths to keep the job and the peace. The smart ones know it is their job to cover up the idiocy of their bosses.

That is how they earn their keep and promotions. Otherwise, what is the point of an idiot boss keeping a smart employee who doesn’t know how to protect them from their idiocy?

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It is your job to protect your boss from his idiocy. And you have no business discussing your boss’ idiocy, especially with his enemies. Venture into such reckless discussions and you will be jobless with your smartness.

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Muckraker

The mouth

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WE start the year with a little story of the dangers of a reckless mouth. Muckraker will write it as if you are listening to your granny’s tsomo. The point of it all will be revealed before the kettle boils.

So here goes.

Some two centuries ago, Czar Nicholas I, the ruler of Russia, faced a rebellion from some renegades who demanded democracy and other things. Qoi!

The Czar reacted with a brutal crackdown that included the chopping of heads.

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Kondraty Ryleyev, one of the rebels, was caught and sentenced to death by hanging. On the day of his hanging, the trapdoor opened but the rope around Ryleyev’s neck broke.

In those days, a rope breaking during an execution was considered a miracle which compelled the authorities to pardon the convict and spare the convict’s life.

With rope broken Ryleyev, thinking he had been saved, stood up, looked at the crowd that had gathered to witness his execution and shouted: “You see, in Russia they don’t know how to do anything properly, even to make rope”. A messenger was sent to the Palace for the Czar to sign Ryleyev’s pardon.

The disappointed Czar was about to sign the pardon when he asked the messenger: “Did Ryleyev say anything about this miracle?”

“Sir, he said that in Russia they don’t even know how to make rope,” the messenger replied.

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“In that case let us prove the contrary,” said the Czar as he tore up the pardon.

Ryleyev was hanged the next day and the rope held tight until he kicked the bucket.

Muckraker read that story from Robert Greene’s 48 Laws of Power. The anecdote accompanies Law 4: “Always say less than necessary”.

Ryleyev would have lived to see another day if only he kept his tongue on a short leash.

Did Muckraker hear you say qoi?

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The story is not about what happened to a reckless mouth in Russia two centuries ago but what is happening to Knorx Molelle because of his mouth.

Muckraker’s grandfather used to say the three things that get a man in trouble are the mouth, the hands and the ‘member’. The hand does things to things and people. The mouth says things. And the ‘member’…we all know the David story. Molelle is a victim of his mouth.

Nka! Ichuuuuuuuuuuu!

muckraker.post@gmail.com

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