Shashe

They recently buried the scoundrel. Flags fluttered at half-mast. From eyes half-glazed by booze tears trickled down chubby cheeks puffed up by our stolen wealth. This, I imagine, is what took place, because I was not there. I did not attend, nor did I watch on TV. The scene was “too ghastly to contemplate”. Festus Mogae had accolades posthumously heaped on him. What I found particularly distressing was the credit he was given for battling the HIV pandemic in our country; all because he had gone to the International community with a begging bowl on our behalf and declared that AIDS was threatening to wipe us out. The International community generously responded and offered help. What Festus Mogae did not tell the International community was his role in the way the disease spread around the country. It was at a time when Government was the main employer of the common man in our country. Mogae was Permanent Secretary to the President (PSP) and Head of the Civil Service. Married civil ser...

Like I have said many times before, I am not a lawyer. However, I have been reliably informed by those competent at law that A CONTRACT CAN BE CRAFTED TO BIND TOGETHER TWO PEOPLE OF ANY GENDER, TO CO-OWN EVERYTHING THAT EITHER ACQUIRES OWNERSHIP OF, GOING FORWARD! Our laws do not prohibit a person adopting a child of the same gender as themselves, but they do prohibit a person adopting a child of the opposite sex. So I wonder if the so-called “same-sex marriage” is simply a backdoor attempt by paedophiles to get their hands on innocent children. There is a massive campaign being waged to change our culture and our religious norms by people who have actively participated in Africa’s enslavement in the past. The “argument” presented by those people FOR legalisation of same-sex marriage is something they call marriage equality. But men and women are not, and have never been equal. Rather, men and women are complimentary. Their role in perpetuation of the species “Homo Sapiens” is complime...

 Lest we forget...

In the wake of the terrible tragedy of twelve (12) scholars getting killed in a road accident in South Africa, I watched the eNCA television channel yesterday where Mr. Barnes passionately laid out his “take” on what needs to be done.  In my view he is 100 % right. Purpose built bold yellow/orange vehicles, the very kind they use in the United States, need to be acquired to serve as scholar transport. You see, the main reason why scholars wear school uniform is because children’s safety is everybody’s responsibility. Your child is my child, and vice versa. If children’s transport boldly stands out in traffic, drivers of such transport won’t dare drive as recklessly as they do now, because we will all be watching, and we’ll not hesitate to do a citizen’s arrest on a reckless scholar transport driver. The children being transported are completely at the mercy of the criminally irresponsible drivers.  So, I hope the eNCA commentary by Andrew Barnes leads to scholar transport ALL ...

 Is what we are experiencing in Southern Africa, gender based violence (GBV) or something more sinister, namely gender based war (GBW)? I think it is the latter, and it is caused by OUR KILLING OF MARRIAGE. You see, when the colonialists subjugated our subcontinent, they were looking for wealth. They had no time to waste with complex native customary laws. So they contented themselves with controlling the apex native administrators – the so called CHIEFS, and left the “micro” administrations to their cultural practitioners. The result was that we continued to marry according to our traditions, thereby subjecting our families to cultural stabilisation. When we attained independence, we made no effort to harmonise European marriage law and practice with our own traditional laws and customs. We were too lazy. All we continued to do is to practice Roman Dutch Law of marriage alongside our own cultural laws of marriage. The result is the mayhem we are witnessing today. Young people no l...

 It would take a lifetime to try and change place names back to their original Kalanga language form. Indeed the exercise is neither practicable nor desirable, because to the inhabitants of those places, the corrupted versions of the names are what now makes sense. However, now that we have news read in Kalanga here at home, we Kalanga speakers feel bombarded by constant mispronunciation of place names. Take the name “Molepolole” for example, which is a sprawling village/city some fifty kilometres west of our capital city, Gaborone. I put it to the news writers that if they ask an old (and I mean old) person in that village, what the name of the village is, the answer will be “Mulipulule”, which is the Kalanga pronunciation. The question now is: in reading the name “Molepolole” during Kalanga news cast, which pronunciation should be presented to listeners? Should Kalanga news writers not make an effort to do just a little research on the correct (Kalanga) pronunciation before givin...