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The shouting madam from the US

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Anyone with a modicum of exposure will admit that Maseru is a boring little place.
The restaurants are shoddy and the bars rowdy. Parks have been invaded by rascals bereft of any decency. Those yellow-bellied jalopies make walks treacherous. Our politics is predictably shallow.
A cesspool teeming with freeloading maggots. That is probably why US Ambassador Rebecca Gonzales has invented a new hobby. It’s called the Bellowing Game. Every month she has to find something for which to chastise the Lesotho government. And she is spoilt for choice when it comes to things to bellow about.

Our government specialises in bungling. It has to be constantly reminded to do the right thing. Left to its own devices, it is capable of spectacularly stupid things. Always pushing the frontiers of mediocrity.
Forever searching for new gaffes. So, madam Gonzales has her hands full as she battles to spank our government into line. She is like a rookie teacher in charge of a kindergarten class.

Hey, stop it! Don’t do that! Uena, Moeketsi watch your mouth! Mothibeli, get off the window now! Don’t pee on your toys. Stop pinching each other.
When her shrieking doesn’t work, she resorts to threats. Blah, blah, AGOA is under threat. Behave yourself or we will not renew the MCC. Nyoe, nyoe, we built hospitals for you. We gave you the road in Thamae. Your country will be a shanty town without our roads. All of which is not completely unreasonable noise.

Indeed, Lesotho has to sort out its mess and play by the rules if it wants to enjoy the US’s benevolence. The only trouble is that Gonzales has turned her shrieking into a hobby and is taking it too seriously.
And she has ample enablers ready to give her space to ramble on about obvious things. She is behaving like a big fish in a small pond. Were Gonzales in any other country that matters, she would have been summoned and told to watch her mouth. Her colleagues in proper countries don’t just run their mouths as she does.

She can do it here because we are a country that likes hand-outs. We are so passionate about free things that we call ‘donors’ ‘development partners’.
He who feeds you controls you. Our government cannot raise a finger to protest because Madam Gonzales will report us to her bosses and they will close the taps.
So, Mr Softie and his government have to meekly swallow whatever the madam says. Hearing her speak, you would think AGOA has created the best jobs in the world. The madam will not be visiting any of those AGOA sweatshops because she knows they are hell holes.

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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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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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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