Each time Scrutator has criticised the National University of Lesotho (NUL) teachers, alumni, students and the like have ganged-up to pelt her with vitriolic comments.
You are a foreigner going through a very long spell of sexual deprivation, the not-so-cultured ones have said.
The polite ones have called her a bitter ignoramus who has refused to get over the pain of having been rejected by NUL. Others have silently curtailed their anger hoping that, with time, Scrutator’s candid comments about our beloved university will turn out to be just hot air or malice.
Well, Scrutator has news for such ilk: She is not planning to stop reminding the nation about the mess at the state-funded college even if some people choke with anger.
Those of the discredited notion that time will prove Scrutator wrong are in for a very long wait.
If anything, recent events have vindicated her left, right and centre.
But none of those events can match this week’s admission by Vice-Chancellor Professor Sharon Siverts about NUL when it comes to proving that Scrutator is a young but wise lady.
Siverts admitted at a press conference on Monday that the university, that we always thought to be a symbol of national pride, has become a pathetic embarrassment even to those whose conscience had been eroded to a morsel by years of relentless sinning.
To put it bluntly, she said NUL had degenerated into something like a lawless jungle.
In a statement that read like it was written by someone who had grown smart from reading too much of Scrutator, Siverts said some workers at NUL report for duty “drunk and glassy eyed”.
Mmmmmmm, does that sound like Scrutator’s line a few weeks ago?
Well, don’t you dare nod your head as yet for the best is still to come!
Siverts said some workers were busy moonlighting at the courts instead of teaching.
And when their full-time jobs interfere with their side vocations the workers tinker with the time-table or cancel classes altogether.
She said there was a general repugnance to authority at the NUL and some workers think it’s sexy to go AWOL on Mondays and Friday.
Some have not set foot at NUL in three months but they still get their salaries. All these misdemeanors have contributed to the higher-than-normal failure rate.
You would think that after saying those things she would have remembered to stop there but she didn’t.
Instead she blasted and blasted until she could blast no more.
Workers at NUL lack initiative and they are hostile to hard work, Siverts said in yet another stinging assessment of the calibre of personnel that have been entrusted with the making of future leaders of this country.
She said staff and their relatives who are exempted from paying fees are adding to the university’s financial burden because they repeat, repeat and repeat.
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She went on until she reached what Scrutator has always suspected to be the source of this mess.
Hear, hear, and hear: Deans, heads of departments and directors are elected just like we vote for our MPs every half a decade.
Only at NUL does one need to canvass for votes to become a dean or head of department.
The result is that plum jobs are handed to people with neither a clue about what they are supposed to do nor the stamina to learn how to do it.
You need not be a rocket scientist to appreciate what chaos such a system will cause.
Little wonder then that the workers, the very people who appoint and disappoint, can tell a dean or director to go to hell or somewhere near there.
The deans and directors are beholden to the electorate.
If they start flexing their muscles they will be voted out, pronto.
Siverts also talked about NUL’s financial problems but Scrutator will not venture into those because they are well documented.
That NUL is bust (by the way some NUL graduate think that word should be “burst”) is as clear as a goat’s behind.
As for a curriculum that has refused to enter the 21st century with the rest of the world, Scrutator will say no more.
This proud girl from Qacha will not say a word about Siverts’ revelations that one lecturer decided that there was wisdom in selling examination papers to students.
At least now it’s clear that even NUL’s leader knows that she is driving a car without wheels.
As for those whose blood boils every time NUL is criticised they now know that Scrutator’s views are shared by the very people tasked to pull the university out of this mess.
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There was gnashing of teeth in cabinet circles when rumours of a reshuffle swept through the city last week.
There were reports of premature farewells as ministers who were rumoured to be in line for the axe braced for the news.
Tears of pain were shed. Farewell hugs were exchanged.
Scrutator hears that sangomas in Maseru had a busy weekend as ministers sought potent charms to protect them against dismissal.
The last time that Ntate at the top decided to make changes to his team he used a huge machete and left some five people jobless or Mercedes Benzless.
Some of those who have been eyeing cabinet posts are said to have crossed rivers and scaled mountains to reach their sangomas.
One particularly ambitious MP is alleged to have promised nephews, cousins and nyatsis that their days of poverty were going to end on Monday when he will be a minister.
But it appears the news of the ‘Mother-of-All-Reshuffles’ was a false alarm.
What we had this week was a mere change of chairs on the Titanic.
NB: Thou shalt not quote Scrutator on any of the above for she will deny it with her life.
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Seventy-one!
Oh My God!
Seventy-one!
That’s how old Ramootsi Lehata was on Monday when he was promoted from being the assistant minister of agriculture to become the minister of public service.
Surely, we have taken the concept of “experience” too far.
Scrutator has nothing against old people but she thinks that they must know when to call it quits.
The last time Scrutator checked this country’s official retirement age was nowhere near 70+.
Those that set the retirement age at between 60 and 65 were not mad.
They knew that beyond that age the human body will not be functioning at its optimum.
The old people of this country must learn to quit. If people work until they are so old that they can’t walk without a stick then when are the young ones going to get a chance to learn how it is like to run things?
And who will tell our young kids folk stories when our old people of this country insist on working until they drop dead?
Phew!
Seventy-one!
We wouldn’t be having so much unemployment in this country if we rested all 71-year-olds in this country.
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Scrutator would like to end this week’s instalment with a masterpiece from Malawi, that land north of us, where witchcraft is said to be constitutionally classified as a bona fide profession.
MPs in that country have proposed a law banning people farting.
The law will make it an offence for anyone to emit gas “through the other end”.
“Any person who vitiates the atmosphere in any place so as to make it noxious to the public to the health of persons in general dwelling or carrying on business in the neighbourhood or passing along a public way shall be guilty of a misdemeanor,” the Bill says.
And you say politicians are lazy.
Ache!
