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akoerekoere!
You know a radio station has lost the plot when it allows its presenters to use such words.
A fortnight ago PC FM, a radio station Scrutator respects, sank to those pathetic depths when it allowed two of its most overrated DJs to go on a Makoerekoere ‘lynching’ spree.
DJ Bootz and DJ Counter Force were bitter that a beauty pageant run by their station had been described in unflattering terms by the Lesotho Times, a paper they mistakenly believe to be employing many foreigners.
Soon, what might otherwise have been a civil debate degenerated into unpalatable and juvenile rants about foreigners.
Callers, some of whom Scrutator suspects had been put on standby by the two DJs, began pooping their xenophobic chants.
It was clear that the two DJs were using the airwaves to parade their prejudices and anger towards foreigners under the veil of a national debate.
Scrutator has never been one to oppose free speech and she has repeatedly chastised misdirected souls that try to interfere with our right to speak our mind.
Yet that right must not be used to spread hate speech and settle petty scores by those that have the privilege of having airtime on radio stations.
Scrutator has never understood at what point bashing foreigners became such a favourite national pastime.
What she knows for sure is that the word makoerekoere is used by people who are not only shallow but also have morsels of pig manure in their greymatter.
Instead of challenging foreigners on the basis of merit such people would rather poison the airwaves with vitriol.
Thanks to untrained radio presenters abundant in this country, such people are allowed to rant and rave about foreigners.
After fuming on the radio stations they normally feel satisfied, completed and validated.
But the sad reality is that this feeling is only temporary.
It’s a pyrrhic victory because soon they will realise that even after blasting foreigners they still remain disadvantaged, disenfranchised, disempowered, dissatisfied and disillusioned.
Socially and economically, such people remain right where they were before they insulted foreigners.
Bashing Chinese and other foreigners is a hobby for failures that are desperate to blame someone for their miserable lives. Bashing foreigners won’t change your life but it gives you one toxic feeling to hold onto — hatred.
Hate won’t change your bank balance sheet but instead it stops you from thinking of innovative ways to better your life.
Hate speech brings only misery to those that use it. It blinds you to opportunities that are so copious in this country.
While you cry, scream and mourn about foreigners sober minded people are grabbing those opportunities to improve their lives.
Scrutator feels sorry for the two DJs at PC FM and their cahoots for they only achieved in promoting themselves as limited people.
By using the word makoerekoere they hurt themselves and no one else.
That word reminds them that they have hopelessly failed to change the state of lives and turn around their waning fortunes.
It reminds them that they have been so thoroughly beaten to the means of livelihood and opportunities that they can only resort to hurling insults at fellow human beings.
The DJs only served to portray themselves as demagogues bereft of ideas.
They have shown to all who care to see that they have refused to be extricated from the bums of the world where they remain stuck because they have refused to embrace the 21st century with all the things it brings.
Such people lack exposure and they believe the world ends on the banks of Mohokare River.
Luckily, this world has not waited for such people. It has never waited for such ilk. It has moved and transformed while those people research new potent words with which to insult foreigners.
While they call on this country to march backwards with blind and arrogant zeal the world is moving forward.
China, once considered one of the most closed societies, has opened up with tremendous results.
Its people have gone out and embraced the opportunities that the world has to offer. We, on the other hand, seem to have adamantly refused to look beyond our borders.
That is why we feel crowded when people from other countries cross into our territory.
Yet no matter how much we hate them, the fact of the matter is that bashing them won’t change our lives.
They are not even a problem.
They have never been since the British willingly gave up this country in 1966.
Our biggest problem as a country has been us Basotho — how we treat, rule and hate each other.
It is us who have perfected the art of marginalising each other through corruption and nepotism.
The scars we have were not inflicted on us by foreigners. They are a result of brutal blows that came from people with whom we share roots and blood ties.
It is therefore us, Basotho, who have to learn to respect, cherish and love each other before we start to whine about foreigners.
History has taught us that we Basotho are our own worst enemies.
Our history is replete with incidents in which we turned against each other, killed each other and took the hammer to smash the little we had built.
Remember that after the 1998 madness we made a beeline for Ladybrand, a foreign town, to buy food.
As I write this now I am sure some of us are eating food bought by our relatives working in other countries. Many of us were educated because our fathers were working in the South African mines.
The houses that we stay in, the inheritances we have, the cows that paid our mother’s dowries are a result of money earned outside our borders by brave men who knew that beyond our border there is work to be done.
Who then are we to refuse other nationals a chance to make a living within our borders?
Go out there and fight for opportunities this world has to offer.
Don’t fight because you are a Mosotho but because you are a global citizen who deserves a chance to work and have opportunities anywhere in this world.
Opportunities won’t come your way because you have called a foreigner a lekoerekoere. Let go of that hatred, dust up those certificates and take what the world has to offer.
Ache!
Scrutator29@gmail.com
