THE season of tomfoolery is upon us. Its high jinks all the way. We can hardly spend a day without being told of some nonentity forming a political party. As we approach February — the month some have marked on their calendars for Size Two to meet his waterloo — we can be sure parties will come thick and fast.  We will be bombarded with speculative stories about new political parties. Our so-called journalists never disappoint when it comes to churning out such drivel.

Two parties are already in the works and might be launched in a few days. Ask not what they stand for because that has never mattered in this country. We are obsessed with positions without authority, ownership without substance and talk without thought. We are yet to attain a level of sophistication where we look at political parties as a means to change the world. We are novices in politics and toddlers in democracy.   In our zombie-like stupour we think the answer to every problem is political. The economy is kaput, form a party.

There is corruption, form a party. You have fought your leader, form a party. A lover has jilted you, form a party. Cockroaches have invaded your home, form a party.  At the rate we are going there will be more political parties than companies in this country. No, I lie. That is already the case. What we should be afraid of is that people will soon start forming political parties for goats and cattle. Indeed, that is possible because there are more goats and cows in this country than people. Surely there will come a time when there will be no people to join political parties.

Sadly it is the people we think should know better who keep driving this frenzy. Boom, Khasu is in the house. Phew, Maisa is jumping around like he is pressed. Boom, Mokola says he is ready to rumble. That garrulous young lad who used to play in the LCD now has his own political toy.  Ramathebane is trudging along with his own baby.

White Horse is doing his own thing. Monyake is also doing his own thing.
Rumour says the affable workhorse is cooking his own pot. We now know that there will always be some poor soul who will follow them to their new political hovels. A story told to Muckraker by her late crazy uncle some years ago aptly explains this sorry state of affairs. Listen carefully for this is a stinking story retold by a woman whose left hand is permanently on her nose.

A man visits his in-laws with his wife. A few minutes into the greetings he asks for directions to the toilet. Nature knows neither protocol nor location. So off he dashes to the small room at the end of the corridor to free himself of a rumbling stomach.  The did done, he flashes but realises that there is one stubborn ‘boy’ who keeps swimming back up instead of joining his comrades in the septic tank. Fearful that it’s his, he flashes again but the ‘boy’ stands firm. It is unperturbed by the violent blows of the Wasco water.

After ten minutes of struggling with the ‘boy’ the man gives up. Now he has a predicament:  there is no way the ‘boy’ will disappear and if he leaves it hanging around the next person will spread a malicious rumour that he is the son-in-law who chocked the toilet. In that moment of desperation an idea hits him: What if there is a way to make this silly ‘boy’ disappear? He momentarily contemplates, then rolls a tissue around his hand, picks up the ‘boy’ and throws him into his pocket.

I will throw it outside, he thinks to himself. The ‘boy’ deposited into his pocket the man confidently walks out of the toilet. The evidence had been buried.  But as chance would have it his mother-in-law is already waiting frantically at the door. She too has received a call from nature . Moments later she comes out of the toilet with a bright smile on her face. “Kkkkkkkkkkkk,” she chuckles as she eyes the son-in-law. “My son what the hell did you do to that ‘boy’ who has been refusing to go for a week now?” she asks her startled son-in-law.

“Well done. That ‘boy’ belongs to Uncle Kotso. Were it not for your heroics we would have hired a plumber. It’s good to have creative husbands,” she says as she winks at her pleased daughter, the man’s husband.  Meanwhile the son-in-law sits there with a sheepish smile and the stinking ‘boy’ in his pocket. The lesson: never borrow a problem. Some problems just cannot be solved. The son-in-law learnt the hard away.

Soon the ‘boy’ in his pocket starts suffocating his in-laws. Obviously the air became fresher after he left. At a funeral some months later a drunken aunt walks to him and says: “Ntate, you must stop this business of farting when you visit your in-laws. I know what you did last time. Hahahahahaha, you really robbed those old people of their oxygen that day”.
And before he could defend himself the intoxicated aunt was gone, leaving those around him rolling in laughter.

You see, our politicians think they can solve any problem. When things go haywire, as there are wont to, they become the problem. So they start stinking to high heavens.  The problem here is a country that has refused to change.

A country adamant in its sickening ways. A little Kingdom with monstrous problems. Anyone who tries to help it becomes part of the problem.  The British tried but failed. Leabua tried to beat the problems out of this country until his hands were sore. When he was too tired to fight the army he had formed grabbed him by the ears and yanked him out of the State House.  The army thought strongman tactics would work but it found itself immersed in the morass. General Lekhanya aged faster as soon as he took power.  Look at him now: he is way older than his age. You would think he was working in the mines.  His military comrades took him out of his misery when they toppled him. Enter Mokhehle, the historian who is the father of most of the parties in scattered across our political scarp yard.

That one was just talk and no action. An orator, yes, but never a brilliant leader, he too failed. Size Two came in, left and then came in again but he has not achieved much in dealing with the problem. Uncle Tom? He can claim that he never got a fair shot at the problem because someone threw spanners in the works. The truth, though, is that even if he had ruled until donkeys could use a smart phone he was not going to sort out the mess. So what is the solution? Well, we should cease pretending to be a country because we are not. Yeh, I said it and will say it again before dawn.

Geographically, we cannot qualify to be a country. We look like a coffee stain on a map. Economically, we are a little village. Our existence as a country adds no value to either the world or ourselves.  Regionally, all we do is congest Sadc’s agenda with our problems. We just need a chief executive and his officers. That way we don’t have to wait for five years to fire and hire people.  Indolent workers can be fired instantly.  And who will select the chief executive? It is we the shareholders of the geographical area.