User:Bmagogwe/sandbox

UNETHICAL LEADERSHIP IS THE BREEDER OF SOCIAL ILLS...

We all know the lengths to which frustration can lead man to. We all know of a certain Mohamed Bouazizi who self-immolated himself in December 2011 in protest of harassment and humiliation by municipal officials triggering a domino like effect of Arab world revolutions. . Around the world since the times man embraced civilisation ordinary men have always stood up in dissent to their leadership out of frustration due different factors including soaring unemployment, grand corruption and looting of the state’s monies practiced before the very eyes of the impoverished and desperate peasantry as well as poor governance by the ruling few, all are dangerous ingredients to the cocktails of inevitable revolutions and instability. A few months ago we read an article in the papers certain young man from the ruling party who allegedly in a show of arrogance told the media that how people expect them to rule while they are hungry. But in this world of ours that is fastly developing and advancing to become a global village, social media fastly bridging the gaps of the panacea, with local politics and socio economic wrangles inevitably colliding with international politics and political ideologies of all sorts, arrogant leaders with their mickey mouse politics are treading on thin ice. Arrogant leaders are trampling on the culture and social fabric of our people. What happened to the notion of “kgosi ke kgosi ka batho,” since they are leaders they should respect the fact that they have been installed in positions of power by the people. DREADED RESULTS OF IRRESPONSIBILITY… Apathy is a dangerous habit that shady governments and incompetent political leaders lacking any real political zeal give a coy smile and salute to. The recent low margined elections registration proved that Batswana are resisting change and refuse to evolve with time, by resorting to not vote. They fail to think that the moment you do not vote, it is the time when you put your fate and that of your descendants into the hands of other people. By doing that, you have sat on the very vote that could have swayed the tide to your desired direction. Nonvoters have a tendency of arguing that locally the senior citizens and old people are the ones that are backing and propping up the ruling party. This is a common statement from the mouths of young people. But surprisingly these are the same people that make up to 61% of the youthful population of our country. It is as if this statement implies that the old people’s votes are twice the votes of the youth or the vote of the elderly is worth twice or more of a youth. The youth can only be labeled as ignorant and irresponsible spoilt brats who fail to take the destiny of their country into their own hands and make their voice heard. There is simply no explanation to how the majority of the population can be repeatedly defeated and their voice muffled every four years of general elections. CHIEFTAINSHIP QUARRELS ARE A CANCER TO CULTURAL CONSERVATION... Kgosi Kgari Sechele of the Bakwena tribe, which has become notorious for chieftainship squabbles The ever continuous quarrels over chieftainship are bringing shame upon the name of our country and culture. It is a greedy act that brings and undesirable stain on our cultures and country’s image. The days of when cultural leaders would be locked in chieftainship battles should be over by now. The responsibility, dignity and honour these men wield should be enough to make them desist from getting involved in petty arguments that overlooks the disgrace and negative impact it has on their tribe. Past mistakes should be referenced upon as larger tribes have throughout disintegrated as a result of leadership turbulence. The disintegrations of tribes that splintered to smithereens resulting to smaller tribes which never the less have a single point of origin, such as the Bangwaketse, Bakwena, Batawana and Bangwato. The chieftainship battles are often not very easy to tackle and often remain in a stalemate which results in a tribe to be left without a leader thus affecting the tribes civil functions such as cases of matrimonial weddings and the resolving of customary court cases of common theft, stock theft or cases of matrimonial home breakage thus giving offenders and wrong doers the opportunity to escape and defy the rule of law. The dignified and honourable image that the chieftainship has long maintained throughout history, important in keeping the tribe compact is also threatened as well. This honourable image is an important component in Setswana and African culture as it inspires trust, obedience and faith in the tribal leadership. This is the same image of honour that modern day governmental leadership is keeping. Offering the country’s leader free chauffer driven transport, all round the clock security, dignified accommodation, and creating a wall of policies that makes him inaccessible, portrays a picture of a dignified leader of state one way or the other. Local traditional leaders must desist from engaging in petty chieftainship squabbles that always do not bring anything good save for collapsing the society from the inside and inject feelings of hopelessness, panic and disarray. This epidemic also contribute to the loss of our culture that our leaders stress daily that were preserve as it leaves no one responsible to assemble the public for cultural events and functions. This pandemic is also running parallel to our country’s national values that nations the world over identify us through. We are known as a nation of peace and tranquillity but the social or communal chieftain infighting’s object to that. It implies that at social level we are war mongers but at national level we are meek and hide behind such national valued expressions we identify our selves by like nation of peace.

WESTERN GORVENMENTS MUST STOP DICTATING DESTINIES OF AFRICAN COUNTRIES…

The western governments have an uncanny and devilish act of dictating the destiny of African states. Our Dumb, “yes men” politicians we have entrusted with leading us and put in charge of our countries administrations seem to be addicted to licking the boots of the Westerners. Since many Western countries have long become metropolitan, they have also long lost their cultures. Since the olden days of missionaries who exported Christianity to the sub Saharan part of the continent they have also long embarked on a spree of removing Africans from their cultural ways of living and cultural acts such as initiation schools, Polygamy, ancestral worshipping, denouncing African traditional medicine among others. It is not long that we attained independence and a substantial number of countries have long lost the core and real essence of their cultural and traditional ways of living. The westerners themselves dictate own their destinies. They still retain the best of their traditions and cultural ways of living. Africans being Africans, they have long tagged along and sung the same song as the westerner’s .e.g. In Botswana Batswana have long lost their real way of traditional dress and other traditional practices; modern day Tswana generations do not know how their ancestors dressed. We are told that our female ancestors wore a traditional type of modern day dress called phaeyana but they cannot identify it, whilst our Zulu and Xhosa counterparts in modern day South Africa know their dress items to the minutest of dress items. Lately the United Nations served our government with an ultimatum to abolish the Kgotla system as it apparently acts against democracy. It has been easy to serve us with a demanding ultimatum because we are Africans. In New York City where the United Nations building is located, the American Government which occupies a seat in the UN Security Council is allies with a repressive Middle Eastern Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, yet the UN cannot dare send ultimatums on the sovereign Islamic Kingdom where women have been stripped of their fundamental right such as the simple act of driving a car. At least the Setswana culture had long woven democracy into the kgotla system as cultural sayings such as “mafoko a kgotla a mantle otlhe”, loosely translated meaning that all kgotla suggestions are welcome emphasize that. The Sovereign Botswana must draw a mark and stop being pushed around with dumb ultimatums that require us to scrap the last of our cultural practices and the UN must focus its attention on matters that require its immediate attention elsewhere in places such as the Middle East, East Africa and others.

WESTERN COUNTRIES STILL FAILING TO APOLOGISE FOR COLONIAL CRIMES Surprisingly in the 21st century countries that claims to be protectors of human rights and morality today are arrogantly quiet on their colonial crimes-Britain, France, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Belgium and Italy as well as settler states such as the United States of America, Canada and Australia. For Britain it took years of legal cat and mouse wrangling to concede defeat despite voluminous evidence and inevitable defeat. If you say you are a transparent democracy that you say you areare, a protector of human rights and observer of rule of law why not voluntarily bow down with apologies. For goodness sake. Criminal behaviour and act of destroying evidence and defeating the ends of justice is what you embarked on when you destroyed thousands of documents detailing the gruesome crimes you committed during the final years of your colonial empire. The hiding of the 8,800 files for 50 years from former colonies flown in at the end of the colonial period shows the lengths you were prepared to go as it defied the legal obligation for them to be transferred into public domain. Words of white Kenyan colonial officials attest to the destruction of evidence. “The legacy files must leave no reference to watch material, indeed the very existence of the watch though it may be guessed at “should never be revealed”. Legacy files are in reference to the papers left in place after independence and watch files is incriminating material marked for destruction. "When a single watch file is removed from a group of legacy files a "twin file"-or dummy-was to be created and inserted in its place .If this is not practicable the documents were going to be removed en masse'' "Emphasis is placed upon destruction,  and that no trace of the documents or their incineration should remain. “When documents are burned the waste should be reduced to ash and the ashes broken up." In certain circumstances colonial officials in Kenya were informed, "it is permissible as an alternative to destruction by fire for documents to be packed in weighed crates and dumped in very deep and current free waters at practical distance from the coast. It then baffles the mind that leaders of these powers fail to properly address issues of the past before stepping forward which is not such a hard thing to do. It is also a display of greed and neo-colonialist attitude to advance issues of their interest such as commonwealth sporting games. The colonial way of thinking can only cause more problems for the African continent. More countries will continue to turn rogue. In fact colonists left us a legacy of civil wars such as the triggering of civil war in DR Congo by former colonists Belgium's involvement in the deposition of Patrice Lumumba.