“ . . . One orb to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them.”
Five months ago, during Donald Trump’s visit to Saudi Arabia, he was invited to open the “Global Center for Combating Extremist Ideology”. (I’m not making that up.)

The huge, darkened room they were in looked like a cross between a starship bridge and a television control room.
And there was a photo op, as there always is at these events, but this one was different.
There was a glowing orb on a pedestal, with the continents in black and the seas in pale grey.

Trump, King Salman of Saudi Arabia, and Egyptian dictator General Abdel Fattah El-Sisi all put their hands on it as if they owned it – and held the pose for almost two minutes.

The radiant globe (and the illuminated floor) lit their faces from below.
If you want to make somebody look evil, light the scene dramatically from underneath, and they did look evil in a comic-book sort of way.
Like the three witches in Macbeth, suggested conservative commentator Bill Kristol. And everybody knew that their curses were aimed at Iran.
Now Trump has directed more curses at Iran, declaring that he will pull the United States out of the 2015 agreement that prevents Iran from developing nuclear weapons for the next ten years.

Or rather, he has announced that Congress will do that – but the Republicans probably don’t have enough votes in the Senate to make it happen.
Why didn’t he do it himself? Maybe he just wanted to share the blame. Every one of Trump’s senior officials and advisers has told him not to do it, and so have all of America’s allies.

Every other signatory to the treaty – Britain, France, Germany, Russia, China and the European Union – also says it will continue to abide by it no matter what the United States does.
Trump says Iran is cheating on the deal, but Yukiya Amano, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said Iran is implementing it faithfully, and all the other signatories agree.

Trump doesn’t like the fact that Iran tests ballistic missiles, or supports dictator Bashar al-Assad in Syria, and says they are against the “spirit” of the treaty, but those things were not part of the deal. If there is one thing Trump understands, it’s contracts. If the words are in the contract, then it’s part of the deal.

If they aren’t, then it’s not part of the deal. There is nothing in the treaty with Iran that says it has to do everything the US wants, and nothing either that says it must not do things that Washington does not like.

It’s strictly about Iran not working on nuclear weapons, and the other countries dropping their sanctions against Iran.
And why does Trump want to kill the treaty anyway? One reason is that he is pursuing a bizarre vendetta against ex-president Barack Obama, seeking to erase every one of his legislative and diplomatic achievements regardless of their value.
But he has also fallen in with bad company.

Trump really is one of the three witches now: he has joined the alliance of conservative Arab states against Iran, although it doesn’t serve any imaginable US interest to get involved in a war between Saudi Arabia and Iran.
You can blame that choice on Trump’s ignorance, perhaps, but Saudi Arabia and Israel are run by well-informed and intelligent people. Why do they want to cancel the nuclear deal?

On the face of it, it makes no sense. If your choice is between Iranian nuclear weapons some time after 2025 (if the treaty isn’t renewed or extended before then), or Iranian nuclear weapons in one or two years’ time (if it is abrogated now), why would they prefer the latter?
Yet they do. Their unspoken calculation may be that if the nuclear agreement does get trashed, then there will eventually be a war – but the United States will be on their side.

There is no doubt that Trump can pull out of the treaty even if Congress will not do it for him. He just has to declare new sanctions against Iran, which is well within his power.  And if he does, other Western companies trading in Iran will find themselves banned from the huge American market unless they go along with the ban, so they will probably comply no matter what their governments say now.

But even if all that comes to pass, Trump cannot stop Iran from making nuclear weapons once the treaty is gone.
The United States would probably suffer no grave damage as a result, as it is a long way from Iran. The Arab states and Israel could suffer greatly, but turkeys vote for Christmas all the time.

Gwynne Dyer

The recurring image of the bus as a universal motif representative of the political landscape on the African continent has proven itself true time and time again. Only the drivers change, the bus however remains the same, and the African voter, diligent in the attendance of the polls and the selection of the next leader/driver: is the driver’s passenger for all seasons of time and history.

How some choose to take the back seat and others choose to chase the seat in the house on top of the hill is a mystery that is quite easy to fathom; it is a choice to be led on the basis of commitments to other professions or some other means of ‘subsistence’ (for the truth remains that most of the African population live below the poverty line, and therefore, many of those one sees are not existing, but rather, droves of individuals are forced to swallow the bitter pill of subsistence to survive the day and have some guarantee that they will see the next day).

Why these masses that subsist for the sake of seeing someone succeed and go on into the house where they will either choose to parley in parliament for the needs of those that elected them into the house, or, to nod the day off in disinterest vexes my understanding.

The politics of the land are the most prominent aspect of the daily life of the state, and when the politics follow a path that is unclear, the citizens of the land are bound to be one confused mass whose opinions do not answer the questions that serve the questions on how best we can progress. What one is bound to hear as an observer is not what can lead the country forward, but rather, the polarised view of the fanatic that holds their leader on the same pedestal as pagans put their deity on: and when the masses become fanatical instead of being objective on the discussion of core and salient aspects of appropriate governance such as the determination of peace and stability, then the state is doomed to failure as an entity that drives the citizens towards progress.

The process of progress is not influenced by the exalted speeches from podiums; it is not advanced by unfulfilled lobbyist promises. The process of progress is driven by the politician’s commitment to the development of the land and the people, and not only a certain sector that supports or supported the politician in the years of their rise to the high seats of power where the ease of access to stipends and per diems drives many an individual insane and renders them megalomaniac. Progress needs a calm environment to fully blossom, for progress demands total peace and calm to reveal its full potential.

Lesotho has to this day never explored its full potential largely due to the politician’s view that they are some tribal chief, and not civil servants that are supposed to the needs of the masses that elect them into office. The supporters of the ‘ruling party’ often hold the false notion that they have the right of access to even the most basic of services; before the others that came before them, before all of those that may or may not have elected the ruling party into power.

The politician thus works hard to answer the demands of those that elected them into power, and in so doing, the politician loses the true purpose of their office in parliament (playing marionette to the crowd of puppeteers posing as supporters). I think not that the office of the president or the prime minister should be the kind of turf where the interests of only a given sector of society are given heed. This office is there to serve the needs of the all of society political and apolitical.

A friend of mine recently told me that this is the season when all the hoes and the boats are cleaned, the former have their blades given a thorough sharpening, and the latter have their hulls polished. There is a new government in power, and its ascent to the top of the house should mean that the new season when new strategies shall be implemented is in; the rites of spring should be sung! The slight hitches and the glitches in the wheels of progress should be oiled away, because the truth is that this country has not enjoyed a single year of comfort since independence in 1966!

All that has been is a sugar-coated kind of democracy where the winning party followers proclaim their Pyrrhic victories amidst a cacophony of election losers murmuring in the background. Basotho have since time immemorial been a nation of murmurers, and none that is bold enough to complain is given due ear. The complainer is often hated for voicing their opinion, and this makes one to form the question: why should issues that affect the nation be treated like hushed wrongs? Being diplomatic about matters that have up to this stage served as fuel for division, polarisation, and continued rivalry will in the long term do this nation a disservice (that is, we shall never progress as a society, state, and nation).

Not everyone understands the true purpose of modern politics, but every John thinks they discuss the matters that are of great concern to every citizen of this here land from the john. Matters that should have long ago been discussed in the house where those that are elected, those that are paid to discuss them, and those who have a clearer understanding on how to deal with matters of national concern, are finding their way into little moot courts of the blind and pseudo-parliaments on street corner radio stations as hot topics of discussion.

Whether the matter should be handled on such open platforms is not the concern, for the main focus for most of these untaught disc jockeys is self-aggrandisement at the expense of the rest of the nation and the blind polarised listeners. Every issue has its own kind of platform in a democracy, not everything can be discussed everywhere, and not all things are suitable for every ear everytime (those that disagree might just have to allow me to put a strip dancer’s pole where their preacher has his podium). The world we live in is now full of figures that think they know, and personally speaking, I do not think it wise for anyone to declare that they know; for there is never a point in the life of man when one fully knows: we are forced to keep on moving in search of more knowledge.

A song by a band that I follow to the heart has the lyrics:

Everyday, wheels are turning, and the cry still returning

Never having created an environment for healthy politics where there shall be no pointing of fingers but true commitment to seeing this country that once was the beacon of Southern Africa get out of the political mess (rut) it is in, the Basotho are now stuck with a monster that they created by thinking that addressing issues head-on was a sin. In the 1950’s, Lesotho was economically sound and had one of the best universities in the region. Fifty years later, countries whose students used to attend the same university have better stories of progress to tell in terms of the developments they have contributed towards in their home nations.

Those Lesotho graduates that had the opportunity to go to school come back with disappointment and uncertainty (getting an occupation matching with the letter earned at varsity is lotto). And the Basotho still grumble on, forcing themselves to be content with little, increasing the poverty pool with the measly salaries and bloated senses of pride. These kinds of aspects have ensured that Botswana leads the pack despite being a late bloomer.

Movement in pursuit of a clear goal is never fettered by the booing of the jealous and often conceited watchers. The goal is more important than the jeers of the spectators, for they are only there to watch the game move on whilst they sit warming their seats at a cost. This country has always adopted the attitude of the man and the donkey, who after listening to the remarks from people without donkeys, ends up carrying the donkey to impress them.

Since 1998, one sees a state that has listened more to external intervention than being a country where neighbour can talk to neighbour to discuss matters that regard their picket fence borders. The sweet political lie is that Basotho are a peaceful people, I think the reality is that they are good at putting on masks that deceive the gullible. One does not have to go far to get the evidence on the true brutality of these ‘peaceful’ people that have not hesitated to mow each other down over matters of political affiliation and blanket colours. To move, one needs to be true to their breathing pattern, their heart rate, and most importantly, their feet.

Countless souls have been killed in the name of politics in this country, but still, the goon that gets the opportunity to speak to some international organisation/s has the audacity to declare, ‘all is well’. I often think that the problem with Africa is not in the people or the politicians; the problem lies in the fact that the average African leader of the present day is a product of the colonial system: and they are finding it hard to let go of the habits their colonial masters taught them.

Every part of Africa that has had a leader that in any way offended the neo-colonial lords of the modern times has had that leader killed. Lumumba, Biko, Sankara, Gaddafi, the list is long. These ones that survive only attain it because they still agree to shine some colonial leader’s knob at the expense of their country never moving forward in terms of real progress. Foreign aid is not a sign of progress…it is a sure symptom of continued dependency on the colonial lords of old (sort of like a 51-year-old ‘toddler’ that still has to beg for their nappy stipend). Maturity means that for a while, one will go so poor that even getting mere salt will prove impossibility, the African leader of the modern times does not agree with this view. Rather, the lavish lifestyles of Hollywood are envied, ignorant of the simple fact that most of these lifestyles are mere acts.

Moving forward does not require the delusional idealist that believes that they can dream everything into life. Movement is a real act that requires real effort from all the parties involved. There is just no fixing an entity as big as a country one-sidedly, that is, to come forward and to think that one can correct all the wrongs of the past without the involvement of all of those that were present when all that was done was done. Adopting the witch-hunt mentality has never worked, will never work, for at a certain point, even hardened criminals stop running and fight back as cornered dogs do.

I am sad that this land with potential will soon be lost simply because fools think violence solves problems when it does not. In actual fact, violence begets more violence, and what we dreamt of yesterday soon fades as the nightmare we created grows to leviathan proportions. The man that thinks they can sort things out using violence is similar in countenance to the fool that thinks they can kill the Hydra, well, the Hydra grows two heads in the place of each of the nine heads lost!

The battle cry of late is that information can be beaten out of suspects and what I think is the government will have more cases of police violence than they can deal with tomorrow. Monies that could be funnelled towards lasting economic and social development projects will be used in the compensation of those brutalised. To move, you have to think before you leap.

Tsepiso S Mothibi

The writer observes, then the writer muses on what has been observed, rethinks on the sighted, makes objective and subjective propositions related to the phenomenon under scope, and then chooses whether or not to write on it; the writing is just the middle part: it is not the end of the “story”.
The story has a beginning, a middle, and an end just like one finds in a simple composition as penned by those pupils in a classroom.
There are themes (developed from the phenomenon under observation) which the writer explores in this composition, and the conclusions the reader as the audience makes can be drawn from the themes under exploration.

The most important part of the story is the plot, the structure to the story that determines the flow of events which if viewed from a logical point of view determines the outcome of the story.

The plot is the pattern of the story the reader can follow in its simple form, but in the case where the style of the writer is complex; then the plot itself assumes a complicated form and demands the reader’s deeper levels of thought to interpret or decipher the meaning/s of the story.

A lot of writers of circumstance follow the simple method of making the plot simple, but in the case where the phenomenon that is under observation is of a complicated sort, or, is made of different structures arranged in different levels that are of different hierarchy and form, then the plot of such a tale told becomes a complicated pattern that demands utmost attention to understand the gist of the story.

An observer of trends in different sectors of society; the writer is often met with the complex decision to pen what he or she sees but often finds that what he or she at first deemed a hallway is in actual terms a labyrinth of meanings of the lives of various individuals of myriad character.
This is the story of a land, and the plot thereof is not easy to interpret, because it thickens more times than it thins and assumes forms as varied as the citizens that are involved in its running.

In a government made up of different political parties it would be impractical to analyse the events in the state from the point of view of the absolute, that is, one cannot exactly judge what is occurring on the basis of just one side; one as a writer has to go through all of the parties involved with a fine tooth comb attitude to reveal the real truths behind some of the behaviours in different sectors of the state: judging one as the absolute villain and the other as a saint is fallacious because men behave as they do on the basis of their interactions with others in the phenomenon of society.

We are who we are because of others around us, and what we do is often the result of the relations we have had with them over the years, that is; our character is relative to the kind of relationships we have with our kin and our neighbours, our fellows and rivals.

That one should deem the acts of others as resultant to some supernatural occurrence outside of the understanding and the cognizance of ordinary people, soon leads to the masses wrongly believing that one side is right and the other wrong.

None is absolutely wrong, and no one is ever completely bad or rotten as the misinformed judges of social relations within a democratic state assume.
The virtues of compassion and grace reduce us as humans to our most effective point of relation; we become better citizens if we wear each other’s shoes, and in the process advance the progress of the state to the desired levels where it benefits all.

Resorting to such obtuse observations and malpractices as mudslinging tirades one hears over the radio or reads of in other forms of media platforms reveals nothing of us except one aspect; we are more colonised than we were in the past, in fact, we have fallen into the clutches of a more severe kind of colonialism, the very heart of its darkness: self hate.
If you hate your brother or sister on the basis of some passing event (for in the modern democratic state, a government lasts only a mere four to five years or even less as recent history has shown), then there is some something, some shortage of cells in the corpus callosum that connects the two cerebral hemispheres of the think mass you have in the confines of your cranium.

How the colours of banners and standards should divide the human race to the extent they do when it comes to politics beats my understanding, for in reality; most of the influence the spectrum seems to have on the minds of the party followers is actually based on a duncish form of hypocrisy: one claims to hate a given party but has their membership card that gets them the tenders and the other benefits.

I call the fanaticism one sees at rallies “toying-with-the-present-messing-with-the-future”, for if one deems what they hear the truth just because it agrees with their individual plans is in essence a divided entity; the same divided entity that sold their kin for mirror shards and glass beads into slavery during the old colonial era (for we now have a new form of colonialism that operates on the same ‘divide and rule’ principles of the old one).

We cannot afford not to be compassionate, we cannot forget that we are neighbours who often face poverty together, and we cannot forget that we come from a continent that is deliberately underdeveloped by the west because of the huge potential that it carries only if its citizens understand that they have to unite as one in mind, in heart, and in action.
It is with an utter sense of disgust that I listen to the campaigns leaders make that denigrate the efforts and actions of other leaders, with whom they share the same platforms, and with whom they at one stage in history shared the same visions with before the division.

I honestly do not care what party rules the state; as long as the grievances of the masses are addressed in their full spectrum that includes abysmal levels gaps between the rich and the poor, increasing levels of unemployment, rampant disease, and uncontrollable levels of crime and corruption.
Telling me as a citizen who has to cope with the symptoms of extended state mismanagement from the platform of the impoverished and unemployed just sounds like utter self-righteousness; sounds like a hyena grovelling for a morsel in a kill by a pride of lions.

The owl is far-seeing, is a symbol of wisdom, and their group is called a parliament; is a parliament full of short-sighed heckling hyenas or wise far-sighted owls or is in this case full of a group of judging crows (a group of which is called a murder)?
Who is being murdered when people choose sides and form new alliances of self-interest? It is the future of the state being stabbed to death like a lone Caesar in a Shakespearean tragedy I tell you.

The sad thing is that all of us as the citizens of this state, plebeian and noble, serf and aristocrat will have to answer to our children when the future is an unliveable place because of the wars and battles we started this day.

When Charles Dickens penned A Tale of Two Cities one would think his was a story of a love triangle gone wrong, but from one of the characters words and the events of the era in a lot of ways match the limbo we seem to be going through:

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.
The Individual hears stories of new projects, new strategies implemented that can save the country from the present status, but interspersed with these hopeful projections are slanderous words which in their primal nature match libel.

One as an individual often does not know who is really telling the truth, who is in reality fooling who, and the only sensible thing to do is just step aside and observe, and this day, such an observation has to come to the fore; the drivers have to be told to drive carefully for the road is full of potholes.
That the influences of politics and party religion end up in the media makes up for an ugly Russian doll; a long plot whose meanings are lost as the piece of history progresses toward an uncertain end.

There are meanings within meanings and all around, accusing fingers pointing in every direction. Close your eyes and think.
Finality is the mark of the end of something, and finding solutions to existing problems should form the larger part of the debates we engage in as citizens.
Loquacity should not overcome common sense, prestige should not be lost over greed, prudence should be the charm. The violent wally-wanker tirades swallowed as whole truth by the divided sections of the citizen masses spewed forth the uncouth lips of the obtuse pseudo-politician-cum-saint-I-will-patronise-only-those-that-lick-my-unwiped-bottom-for-a-floosie-favour should come to an end; that is if we are sensible.

We are what we are, and I am not the kind of individual that believes in what he hears without questioning its source, sort of like; I will never drink of water unless I have read the label: and so, I will only follow a politician if his or her speech is polished, respectful, considerate, and sensible/cal.
That one should listen to the tirades and tantrums of their “leader” just on the basis of affiliation is as old fashioned as the Nazi mass’s fanatical following of the megalomaniacal buccal boaking of the genocidal warlord Adolf Hitler (nee Schicklegrubber).

Follow the word of the calm, forget the words of a character that believes they have to shout to be heard, the most dangerous characters in human history were always loud, were always right in their own sight, which is not true.

We do not simply say the other side is wrong without first acknowledging our own weaknesses, if we do; we are merely serving the beast of self-interest which serves only the interests of those that are afflicted by it.

The biggest misunderstanding of our times is found in the interpretation of “democracy”; democracy does not mean that one should address the parliament as they would a gathering of faithful beer-quaffing patrons in a tavern.

Words have to be selected wisely so that they do not sow seeds of division amongst the citizens of the state, and personal matters between two individuals are best sorted out by the two of them and no one else.

Being considerate of the ears of the young is honourable, because whoever does not acknowledge the fact that there are children that have to reach the future is in my books not worthy of mention.

Long wars have been fought to get this state to the point it is now at, and to insult the selfless efforts of those that perished in the struggle by resorting to violent means and words after peace was found, just plain labels whoever uses such careless speech to address the masses as inconsiderate.
Reconsider, reconsider, reconsider your stance and the standing of those around you before you make any rash decisions; doing so will guarantee that you have a peaceful rostrum to speak from tomorrow when it is your turn to speak.

Messing it up without care is similar to burning down the house with its full stock of furniture before you even settle in it. Respect the house in advance.