SCRUTATOR is worried sick if the editor of one weekly still has her tongue after her stupefying bootlicking antics.
The kowtowing editorial that I stumbled upon in the paper might have dazed even the person it sought to defend.
The obsequious tabloid wants all the media to apologise to Police Commissioner Letooane ‘Malejaka for simply reporting her court battles.
In other words, the bootlicking editor thinks the media was wrong to report what judges, magistrates and lawyers had said on the matter.
The rumbling editorial attempts to lecture readers about the need to “know and understand” the role of the police.
“The recent vilification and flagrant disrespect of the commissioner of police, whilst the matter was sub-judice, defies our logic of police operations and obligations to serve the public and protect the victims of crime,” gushes the paper.
“The police commissioner is human after all and not above the law just like any other citizen, but the political connotations which were attached to her trial by the public, at the instigation of our media, leaves a lot to be desired.”
Bunkum!
What leaves a lot to be desired is an editor who thinks there is something wrong with reporting court proceedings involving a very senior public official as the media did in the case of ‘Malejaka.
In fact, any editor who spikes a story about a police commissioner battling to avoid doing time needs to have his or her head checked.
“We urge the media to publicly apologise to the commissioner of police for unjustly berating her and fuelling disrespect for her office,” the editorial winds up.
If there is anyone who needs to apologise, it’s the author of the editorial for embarrassing the journalism fraternity.
Will the paper also ask the media to apologise to ordinary citizens whose court trials they have reported?
Why one would get angry on behalf of the top cop boggles the mind.
Whoever lied to them that a tongue is a renewable part of the human body misled them.
Continue the bootlicking and you will find yourself without a tongue.
If this is the kind of toadying journalism the paper is committed to practise, maybe Scrutator might as well start appealing for tongue donors on behalf of her colleagues at the tabloid.
There has been so much noise about Lesotho merging with South Africa.
Rather, Lesotho being swallowed up by South Africa.
That a whole professor and a donor-funded organisation would arrange a forum to debate such an issue is quite incredible.
Granted, we have largely depended on our giant neighbour for everything from cabbages and eggs to screws and razor blades.
Also, thousands of Basotho are employed at South African mines, contributing a huge chunk to our national coffers.
But does that justify incorporating Lesotho into South Africa?
Methinks not. That surely cannot be reason enough for us to lose our sovereignty.
It’s amazing that people who have gone to school think we can wish away our poverty by simply becoming South Africa’s 10th province.
Yes, they might have a maze of tarred roads — compared to our one-street capital — as well as skyscrapers and a glitz of lights, but South Africa is no paradise.
I think someone has been watching too many soapies on South African television channels.
South Africa, despite its economic muscle, is teeming with poverty-stricken citizens who like most Basotho struggle to put a meal on their tables.
Our giant neighbour is battling to stem crime and the spread of HIV and Aids.
The poverty in that country stinks.
Then some people dream of seeing Lesotho become part of a nation that is clearly failing the majority of its own people.
What claptrap!
Forgive my French but this is bulls**t.
Suggesting that Lesotho become part of South Africa is a brazen admission that we have failed to run our country and pluck it out of deepening poverty.
Instead of chasing such wild dreams, Scrutator thinks the proponents of the amalgamation are better off ruminating about how best Lesotho can become a prosperous nation.
They can advocate the free cross-border movement of citizens of the two countries, but not a merger.
Won’t it be colonisation of some sort — only that this time round it will be by our black brothers and sisters?
Will any of the advocates of the merger, when he can’t provide for his wife, ask a better-off neighbour to take over his wife and children? Laughable, isn’t it.
It’s sad that such people are given acres of media space to push such ludicrous agendas.
The world over, some groups of people have been battling to be recognised as independent states but here we have people that would rather be part of another country than be a sovereign state.
I thought the Caster Semenya saga had died across our more prosperous neighbour.
But last week Semenya had her name dragged in the mud once again after a storm over the new billboards erected in Johannesburg.
Maverick businessman Lorry Jackson, who owns the raunchy Teazers strip club, has erected a billboard with a message that the strip club’s dancers “don’t need any gender tests”.
Jackson goes further to rub it in on the boards declaring that Teazers dancers are “100 percent woman”.
The billboard, according to the media, has a nude woman lying provocatively on her back with the words: “No gender tests necessary.”
The ad has triggered a storm of protests from concerned individuals who argue that the advert violates Semenya’s human rights and dignity.
I think the advert goes too far and is an affront to the woman’s dignity.
I, for one, have never been comfortable with this “commodification of women’s bodies” in advertising.
I have problems when the woman’s body is simply reduced to an object of desire.
Where are all the women’s rights groups that are known for making all the noises about the abuse of women?
Why have they been so mute?
