“YOU love to look earnest and inform the world that it’s the ‘duty of responsible business men to be strictly moral as an example to the community.’ In fact you’re so earnest about morality, old Georgie, that I hate to think how essentially immoral you must be underneath.” Sinclair Lewis (Babbitt, p. 69, 1922) Africa is still in a perpetual loop of violence, poverty and ever increasing crime 70 years after its first country attained independence.
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“YOU love to look earnest and inform the world that it’s the ‘duty of responsible business men to be strictly moral as an example to the community.’ In fact you’re so earnest about morality, old Georgie, that I hate to think how essentially immoral you must be underneath.” Sinclair Lewis (Babbitt, p. 69, 1922)
Africa is still in a perpetual loop of violence, poverty and ever increasing crime 70 years after its first country attained independence.
Trying to find why, and trying to understand how human beings think, I learnt of one aspect that we often overlook or totally ignore and or maybe consider it as virtue – hypocrisy.
The above quote of Sinclair Lewis made me look at the conduct of our leaders in countries like Zimbabwe and South Africa.
If you want to understand and learn about leaders in these states, look at how Zimbabwean leaders treat their opposition, then listen to them when they tell the world how honest they are.
Look at how South Africa treats tiny Lesotho, then listen to them telling the whole world how honest they are with Lesotho.
Then I followed the Ukraine-Russia war.
February 24, 2022 saw the full invasion of Ukraine by Russia. My man Vladimir Putin nicknamed that invasion of Ukraine a “special operation.”
He paraded a plethora of reasons to invade Ukraine, from insinuating that Ukrainians are killing Russian minorities in Ukraine, to “denazifying” Ukraine and many other senseless reasons to wage a war against a sovereign state.
Russia tried hard to appear sane. The armed forces of Russia made an easy meal out of poorly equipped Ukrainian army at the start of the invasion.
Everyone caught their breath to see how Ukraine would fare against a nuclear armed Russia, equipped with some of the deadliest weapons in the world.
Hypocrites watched as towns and cities were peppered with harvester bombs (cluster type) that killed indiscriminately and as Putin called a maternity ward a legitimate military target.
The famous BRICS stuck their palms between their thighs and perhaps waited to hear their captain (Putin) tell them of the total collapse and capture of Ukraine.
BRICS kept on playing cards and casino when their team member was killing people, just to spite NATO and the Americans. I took a closer look at the BRICS countries, and I am watching them closely.
What kind of order are they dreaming to usher in this world of utmost bloodletting and hypocrisy? My man rained missiles and rockets on Luhansk, Lyiv, Lyman, Mariupol and many other oblasts thereby ruthlessly cutting lives short, and maiming children with utmost bestial brutality.
I strained my ear to listen to how South Africa would act in defence of the old couple who got clobbered with cluster bombs in Luhansk by Putin, what would South Africa say when Ukrainian prisoners of war were mauled without mercy by Russians. Nothing!
I strained to hear South Africa rebuke Russia, and the Foreign Minister with her Model C English was not as harsh as she did later on Israel.
Civilian casualty figures increased. A chilling story of a woman killed while giving birth did not stop Russia howitzers from decapitating old people in their houses, when other women gave birth in the streets in their attempt to flee from Putin’s bombs.
Stories of rapist platoons masquerading as a liberating force did not bring any sense of humanity in Putin or the gracious South Africa to feel pity for a pregnant woman who got smashed by Kinzhal and Kh-22 and all the fancy murderous weapons.
The same rapists who were later copied by Hamas did not get a tongue lashing from South Africa. Ukrainians queuing for bread were butchered in broad daylight, just like Gazans getting medical attention in Gaza being bombed by Israel.
Perhaps to South Africa that was not genocidal.
Scores of Ukrainians, 61 lives to be exact, were snuffed in one second over the Kramatorsk Railway Station where more than 400 people were butchered.
That did not come out as signal of genocide to South Africa’s government.
My man threatened to kill more and even questioned the very existence of Ukraine as a nation state, just like South Africa, albeit tongue in cheek, questions the existence of Lesotho.
Rather South Africa rebuked Russia with its Sunday voice and then stuck its head in the sand as Russian forces committed genocidal massacres in Bucha and other regions.
Ukrainian dogs and cats experienced the wrath of my man, Colonel Vladimir Putin, just like Gazan donkeys and cats suffered at the hands of Israel.
The man I liked and followed closely when I was still in college was slaughtering them.
His concept of denazification of Ukraine is dry balls to me and he should not attempt to come to me with that nonsense.
Maybe South Africa will swallow that.
He lost my confidence when figures of the victims of his relentless missile strikes reached 8 000 dead Ukrainians.
When South Africa hastened to haul Israel before the ICJ for heinous genocidal crimes against the Palestinians, I said: “Oaii!” Russia is literally frying Ukrainians with thermobaric inferno in the broad daylight worse than the Auschwitz ovens.
When will South Africa haul Russia’s scrawny behind before the ICJ too?
Suddenly, I saw the similarity between South Africa and Israel.
South Africa fried Basotho with its banned phosphorous weapons of mass frying in 1998, just what Israel is doing to the Gazans. That’s how hypocrites behave, ask Sinclair Lewis.
The formula is simple, tell the world how good you are and then downplay your cruelty on your neighbour or even threaten anyone who tells the world about your barbarism. Such action made me look thoroughly at the way South Africa treats Basotho.
I saw the mirror reflection of how Israel treats Gaza.
I saw Netanyahu’s extremist desires of exterminating and swallowing Gaza manifest in South Africa. Gaza has fertile land that Netanyahu wants.
Basotho have water in abundance, and other minerals and South Africa is drooling for Basotho’s resources. Gaza is quasi-landlocked with Israel controlling the Gazans sea.
South Africa fully controls what comes into Lesotho and what may come out and even bullies Basotho during important negotiations like the Highlands Water Project.
The same South Africa is today funding sell-out political parties to destabilise Basotho, just like Israel is funding moles to spy on Gazans, just like Russia is steam rolling the Ukrainians.
In Lesotho’s parliament there are turncoat sell-outs, Masehaqheme, sponsored by South Africa, pushing the RSA’s agenda.
The same evil apartheid-inspired treatment of Gazans by Israel is exactly what the hypocritical and hegemonic seeking bully called South Africa is serving Basotho at their borders, much worse than what Malan and Verwoed served Basotho.
What is unnerving is to learn that the existence of Lesotho as a sovereign state is more in peril today than at any time in its stellar history.
It’s at its existential peril much worse than when De Kok and De Klerk were murdering Africans like monkeys and pigs and occupying their lands like Cabinda, Namibia, and Angola.
It came as no surprise when the same monstrous designs of murderous apartheid South Africa were publicly displayed by SANDF in 1998 when they planted the South African flag in Basotho’s holy of holies – The Royal Palace.
Well, even the Satanic apartheid South Africa of Kat Liebenberg and Konstant Viljoen never did that. Israel under Netanyahu has crept into West Bank and nibbled the Palestinians land and is imposing unlawful settlements and the armed settlers planted their Israeli flag in West Bank.
South Africa is doing exactly what Israel is doing by wrenching away part of Basotho’s territory bit-by-bit like part of Tele, Qacha’s Nek and Sani Pass out of Basotho. Yet South Africa has the audacity to tell Israel to stop encroaching on Palestinians land.
Why so?
Because they have the economic muscle and the military muscle as they can snuff Basotho out in less than 30 minutes. To put it mildly, they would do as their apartheid forefathers did, who bred them and left them a thick file of evil they did in 1986 when they simply shut down all the borders with Lesotho.
Besides that, they have shown the world what they are capable of in 1998 when they fired white phosphorus weapons on Basotho killing and roasting many alive. Just like their apartheid bully buddy Israel is roasting Gazans alive with phosphorus chemical weapon of mass extermination.
Gazans are crying for dignity, for food, jobs, medicine, freedom, and for bombs to stop killing babies. Gazans are crying for Israel to lift its blockade, to stop harassing them, and Israel is denying them that.
It is just like Basotho want freedom, their self-determination and their land back from South Africa. They just want to live happily and utilise their resources as they please.
What is intriguingly surprising is to realise that all Islamic and Arab countries did not ponder to take Israel to the ICJ.
Then suddenly, they came to live when a hypocrite called South Africa rushed to the ICJ, yet the same South Africa is strangling the helpless and hapless sovereign state called the Kingdom of Lesotho.
If South Africa is such a country that likes justice, why can’t they just return to Lesotho what rightfully belongs to Basotho?
As recently as 1985, boards with clear inscription that showed which lands were stolen by the Boers and the British that belonged to Moshoeshoe were still visible in South Africa.
Alas! Today the same has been removed by the South Africa of apartheid ANC.
In Lesotho, it serves South Africa right when Basotho elect weak, naive and clueless governments, which they can bully and intimidate with impunity, hence, the recent signing of the water treaty by the current Lesotho government without care of Basotho’s concerns.
Basotho want their land back up to the sea not the paltry 50km wide corridor once mooted by Mandela.
We never ceased to demand our land back, so the UN declaration of 1962 for return of Bechuanaland, Swaziland and Basutoland land came into being late in the struggle for the return of our land.
This includes the OAU 1964 declaration signed by freed subservient slaves that the rest of Africans would not reclaim their lands. Basotho demanded their land back since 1843.
The ANC knows that. Comrade OR Tambo promised us fair discussions.
For Basotho, the 1964 OAU declaration was 125 years late, besides that, Lesotho still lodged their claim with OAU in 1978. OR Tambo respected and understood that.
In 1843, King Moshoeshoe never accepted the stealing of his land. Black southern Africans called agreed in 1912 that the stolen land shall be returned to their rightful owners, yet when they (ANC) came to power in 1994 they threatened Lesotho’s existence. Communist-inspired organisations like the NUM met in 1992, it’s funny and stupid of them to hear miners deceive each other that they could decide the future of a sovereign state.
Lesotho has never at any time been part of a country called Republic of South Africa or a patch work called Union of South Africa.
When South Africa became a conglomerate of stolen lands in 1910, Basotho had already been a nation state since 1829 and were called a nation in 1824 with a successful fusion of various tribes just as America became nation fused of different white European nations that all surrendered their languages, part of their culture and their being to English speaking British bred whites.
Basotho became a nation state 86 years before the slick patches of stolen lands could be sewn together to form a union of hegemonic British and Boer thieves, that is now benefiting the equally hegemonic RSA of ANC.
Today, the liberated souls of black South Africans of uMkhonto we Sizwe have become direct beneficiaries of apartheid thieving machinery that called everyone a kaffiriki. The boss, baas-ANC, is pumping its fist with an air of invincibility and with a mouthful enjoyment of the spoils of evil and satanic apartheid.
Indeed they have no shame in their faces. The Boers’ spirit of brutalising neighbouring states has found a home in the South Africa of ANC as they are now making faces at Botswana for growing their own tomatoes.
The communist-inspired trade unions are spitting at Eswatini for deciding their type of democracy.
Shame on apartheid heirs.
Their behaviour is worse than that of Israel and apartheid of Malan.
Malan and Verwoed did not give a damn how King Sobhuza led his people than the communist-inspired charlatans who claim to be Africans and democrats but are selling-out to their white communist masters.
That’s how a blackman-swartmense thinks and behaves. Oppressed slaves always forget what they fought for once they reach to the top.
Since they have known nothing except a boot on the neck as a method to control dissent, they practice exactly that when they are in power. Now, they have a boot on Lesotho’s neck and yet they have audacity to tell Israel to behave.
Maybe it’s the time for Israel and its friends to tell South Africa to behave.
We as Basotho, with our Lesotho, don’t want to be part of South Africa, full stop!
Respect our self-determination!
What we want is our land back all the way to the sea.
We don’t want even an inch of what doesn’t belong to us.
If anyone wouldn’t want to be part of the greater Lesotho, no problem.
We have enough trucks, tractors and wheelbarrows to help you relocate to your better South Africa. We will do it for free!
Lesiamo Molapo
