FOR Muckraker and the likes of Lilaphalapha, the past weekend was a gift from the gods of drama and comedy. Those deities will never forsake us in these times of misery and political hanky-panky.
Here we are chuckling at Justice ’Maseforo Mahase’s hideous weave that graced last week’s front page of the Public Eye. May the fashion police arrest her and swallow the keys. Afflicted
May the saloon that glued that dreadful thing to her head be infested with merciless fleas.
The hairdresser should be afflicted with an unending and uncontrollable sickness that makes her say ‘Hela!’ whenever the sun shines.

Such a prank on an honourable judge cannot go unpunished.
It is a contempt of court that should be purged.
Yet Muckraker could not help but have a slight feeling that the judge deserves to be treated like a scarecrow. Some of her recent judgements on the catfight in the ABC are as shabby as her weave.
Like her weave, the judgements look like they were sown in some dark and filthy alley in the bus stop area.
Muckraker has come to believe that the crappy weave that sits on her head was bestowed by some mischievous crooks. They probably caught her when she had gone to setopong area to get one of those ridiculous judgements.
Having cornered her, they probably frisked her and ransacked her bag. They fumed after finding nothing valuable apart from cheap lip gloss.

To punish her for wasting their time they then picked on old weave from a dustbin and fastened it to her head. Back home, Justice Mahase looked in the mirror and thought: this is a blessing in disguise. Now she walks the corridors at the Palace of Justice with a bounce in her step.
Rumour has it that the weave is such an eyesore that criminals appearing in her court are instructing their lawyers to use it as an extenuating circumstance when convicted.
“Your Honour, given the weave you were wearing when you heard this case my client believes that he should get some months off his sentence,” the lawyer would say with a straight face.
“My client says he has suffered enough already.”

Of course, Justice Mahase will not tolerate such boloney because she sincerely believes that when it comes to hairstyles she is “killing it”, as the young ones say.
There is no doubt that until that wet cat of a weave is detached from her head she remains a ‘slay queen’ at the Palace of Justice.
That is her business. Muckraker just hopes she doesn’t come near babies. Those little souls don’t take kindly to ugly things.

Muckraker was still recovering from the tickles of Justice Mahase’s hairdo when she stumbled upon a video of Cheeseboy. Muckraker confesses that she genuinely likes Cheeseboy.
You could say she has a crush on him. Ministerial largesse might have stretched his belly a bit but he remains a hunky to be smooched.
In any case, man with six packs look silly because they come across as trying too hard. Desperation! Who wants a man who looks manufactured when real ones are around? Viva potbelly!
But Muckraker digressed. The video showed Cheeseboy and a few supporters saying nyafu.
Now, you don’t nyafurise hard things. And from the way Cheese boy was illustrating the nyafufication with his right hand you could see he is gifted in the art of nyafurisation.

It was clear he wasn’t talking about jelly or some scrumptious ball of makoenya.
This was serious nyafumania. Which led Muckraker to wonder who Cheeseboy had nyafurised so that he could aptly illustrated the art of nyafurisation. Get you mind off the gutter, please!
You see, it takes skill to properly do nyafu. You squeeze slowly and shake a little bit so that the flesh of that which is being nyafurised flows between your fingers.
When it comes to nyafurising there is a thin line between a delicate squeeze and crashing. And unless done under duress, nyafurisation is entirely permissible. Muckraker will leave it there for now.
Those with rich imaginations are on their own. Suffice to say, she is still waiting for Cheeseboy to call her for a date. If it leads to some nyafurisation then so be it.

Not far from where Cheeseboy was giving a nyafu 101 lecture Uncle Tom was telling his supporters that he doesn’t give a rat’s behind about attempts to topple him through a vote in parliament.
“I am giving counsel as a seasoned one. They say they are going to parliament to pass a vote of no confidence, saying we don’t have confidence in Thabane. I’ve not come to the world for people to have confidence in me, not at all,” Uncle Tom sneered as his supporters cheered.
At that moment, anyone who has bothered to careful listen to Uncle Tom speak knew he was building up to a grand finale.

When it comes to gibes Uncle Tom and Size Two are in the same Whatsapp group.
They have no qualms unleashing bile on opponents when cornered.
So Muckraker only had to count to five before Uncle Tom got to the pith of his story.
“In fact even if you ask me I may as well tell you that I am tired. Those who hear rumours in Maseru about those who say will have a vote of no confidence against me (know that) I have not asked anybody to have confidence in me, not at all!”

Then he delivered the uppercut: “Let he who does not have any confidence in me fuck off to this side and I will fuck off to the opposite side.”
Before you fume at Uncle Tom for using the ‘F’ word, kindly let Muckraker school you a bit.
In this country, we have a nauseating habit of pretending to be outraged then other people do same things we do every day.

We get hopping mad when someone is accused of corruption yet we partake in sleaze every day.
The only difference is that either we have not been caught or we simply lack the opportunity to be corrupt.
And when we tilt the scales of corruption in our favour we rationalize the act by calling it “connections” or “good networking”.

Teachers are getting parents to pay for the extra lessons of children they are already paid to teach. They will find excuses to organize useless trips so they pinch some coins.
You are paying for your kids to go watch escalators at the Mall.
They ride the lift, giggle a bit, watch the dolls in the shop and then get back to the bus.
They sing all the way home. If they come from Leribe they will be singing: Re lo tšela noka e kholo Phuthiatsana ka moea. All the way to Leribe.
Meanwhile parents are scratching their heads as machonisa starts calling.
At the back seat the teacher has a Milk Stout bottle between his thighs. Drinking your money in the name of your children. His tummy is happy because of you.

The police won’t blink when getting bribes. Civil servants don’t see anything wrong in receiving lunch money from people they are supposed to serve. Holy dung!
You know you have entered a government office when you see an official walking to the bathroom with a roll of tissue under their arm.
A long time ago those tissues stayed in the bathroom but someone decided to carry them home. Soon the government was spending thousands on plumbing costs because others had to use newspapers and anything else they could lay their hands on.

So the solution was to introduce the “each man for his tissue and the toilet for us all” policy.
A panacea to toilet fraud has been discovered.
In toilets at malls they keep tissues under lock and key because people are just thieves. Still that doesn’t stop people from rolling wads upon wads until the paper is gone.
Yet when some government official is accused of corruption we pretend to be disgusted.
The hypocrisy is staggering. You see it in this nyafu business. It’s there in the nyatsi business too. Churches here are full of power struggles yet the Lesotho Council of Churches says it wants to mediate in the ABC fiasco.
We cry about government losing money to thieves yet we have no problem pinching from our own stokvels and burial societies. Every festive season there are stories of people beating themselves to a pulp to make their stories of being robbed believable.

Let’s get low. Do I hear an Amen? We say our politicians are selfish yet food runs out at weddings and funerals. You see people loading their plates as if it’s their last meal when there is a long list of hungry people behind them.
Gormandizers! Sometimes a whole pot of likahare disappears then later you see some uncle or aunty burping loudly while picking their rotten teeth with huge gumtree twigs.

All this explains why some people are pretending to be shocked at Uncle Tom’s use of the ‘F’-word, itself one of the most beautiful words in the English language.
Anyone who claims to have never used it is a wretched liar.
It’s one of the most versatile words in English. You can use it as a noun, adjective, transitive verb, an intransitive verb, part of an advert or an adverb enhancing an adjective.
You can use it to describe pleasure, anger, disgust, surprise, shock, incompetence or being cheated.
The English themselves might have embraced the word with gusto but they cannot claim to have invented it. It comes from the German word ‘frichen’ which means “to strike”.

What should shock us is not that Uncle Tom is using the ‘F’ word but how he is using it.
He is using it at a time when he has lost all the power to tell anyone to go hang.
Or should we say he is using it too late. The people have already told him to get out of here.
So he is telling those in the house to vamoose when he is already being shoved through the window. The nerve of pulling a middle finger at people who have already divorced you. Next week Muckraker will tell you how the ABC moved from superbikes to tractors.
Meanwhile, someone should send me a hankie. Not through the Lesotho Post because it will arrive in 2050.

Nka! Ichuuuuuuuuuuu!

muckraker.post@gmail.com