Scrutator
IN the media there are very few things that are as dangerous as a radio station in the hands of an excitable and riskily misguided boy.
Scrutator is now very reluctant — read very afraid — to tune to 95.6 because the scatological stuff that sporadically oozes from the supposedly people’s radio pongs to high heaven.
Talk of mediocre management, shallow content and narrow talk shows all rolled into one.
Add an out-of-depth managing director — or is it damaging director? — and you have a brutal potion strong enough to suffocate a radio station.
Is it any wonder then that the station is yet to crawl after a decade on air?
Is it any wonder then that there has never been a dividend for shareholders?
A company is as good as its people.
One would expect the boss, if he has any scruples, to hide behind the studio speakers for stymieing the progression of such a potentially lucrative business.
But he appears to be too consumed by his incompetence to notice that he is pooping all over the show.
Why a man should work his butt off to damage an already soiled reputation boggles the mind.
Last Saturday my dear friend took journalism — if that’s what he calls it — to the dogs.
He hired a certain barrister to help him do a hatchet job on a story that appeared in the Lesotho Times last week.
The circus was awesome enough to leave Dan Rice green with envy.
The portly boss was literally frothing with rage over a story that had absolutely nothing to do with him.
The barrister was hopelessly incoherent.
It was a match made in hell.
The chubby one also seemed to have lined up his foot soldiers to jam the phone-in lines to back his frivolous arguments.
If you applaud and ululate for a mad man at the market he will strip naked.
Remember that lady in Maseru who used to strip naked every time anyone called her TY?
Talk about abusing listeners and misusing precious radio time to fight what can only be a personal war after the Lesotho Times reported alleged nefarious activities at the station.
If you are a journalist worth his salt, phone the Law Society and they will tell you who got it wrong.
And those media colleagues who were rubbing their hands with glee that this paper had at last got it wrong, that was a premature squirt.
By the way, Scrutator enjoyed the award-winning scoop on the front page of that other tabloid last week.
That was an “exclusive” piece indeed, as the weekly rightly boasted.
I must say well done to the guys for revealing that the April 22 attack on State House was an attempt on Prime Minister Pakalitha Mosisili’s life and a suspected COUP attempt.
Was it not that debt-ridden lawyer-cum-journo who rubbished the Lesotho Times for exclusively revealing on April 23 what his paper only discovered last week?
I know it is un-African to celebrate the death of one’s enemy. In fact it is un-African to speak ill of the dead.
But Scrutator is not shedding any tears following the death of Gabonese strongman Omar Bongo Ondimba after a good 42 years in power.
Bongo, who was 73, ruled the west African country of Gabon uninterrupted from 1967 up until he breathed his last on Sunday.
He held the dubious honour of Africa’s longest serving president.
The late Bongo was part of a notorious club of African dictators who lived in obscene luxury while their people wallowed in the mud.
For probably half his country’s 1.4 million people Bongo was the only leader whom they knew as he stubbornly refused to relinquish power.
For those two reasons I am not shedding any tears.
I think Bongo was a political dinosaur who ruled for far too long.
Scrutator is of the firm belief that political power need not be invested in one man for too long or else you have sterility of ideas.
Surely what new ideas would a president have if he insists on ruling ad infinitum?
The key is in passing on the baton.
Bongo reminds me of the unhinged athlete during a relay who, instead of passing on the baton, refused to do so and ran with it into the mountain.
Politicians and nappies need to be changed regularly — for the same reason too!
But what happens when a political party decides to recycle deadwood in the name of fake change?
You still get the same s***!
By now most of us are aware of the political developments in the impoverished southern African state of Malawi.
Bingu wa Mutharika again romped home in Malawi’s presidential election held last month.
But Scrutator was extremely dismayed that Kamuzu Banda’s former right-hand man, John Tembo, was a candidate in the presidential election.
At 77, Tembo is politically over the hill and was the oldest of the seven candidates in the race.
Besides Tembo stands accused of committing gross human rights abuses under Banda’s 30-year brutal rule.
With that heap of political baggage I find it strange that any person, in his right senses, would vote for the Malawi Congress Party.
The party is simply unelectable.
The party’s reputation is so thoroughly soiled that it is beyond redemption.
Tembo, together with his late boss, stands accused of murdering opponents and feeding them to crocodiles.
Those who were “lucky” were thrown into the notorious Mikuyu prison where they were left to rot without trial for years.
Tembo, who studied at our very own National University of Lesotho some 50 years ago, has skeletons in his cupboard.
In any case, why would Malawians want to entrust their future to an old man who has no future?
Scrutator would like to express her heartfelt gratitude to the voters who gave the man a big kick in the teeth at the polls.
Of course, like most of Africa’s politicians, he has not accepted the results.
