For years now Scrutator has shouted her voice hoarse telling those who care to listen that our National University of Lesotho (NUL) is nothing but a glorified high school masquerading as a university.
For daring to pass that candid assessment, this girl from Qacha’s Nek has been verbally lashed from all angles.
She has made enemies in both high and low places.
She has had to live with tirades from sexist males who accused her of being a sex-starved single woman who is desperate for a boyfriend.
Other unprintable comments have been passed against her by chauvinistic males who however seem to follow her column religiously.
But such comments will not make Scrutator shift an inch from her long-cherished belief that NUL is in a mess.
There will be no apologies for stating that naked truth.
Scrutator believes that school in Roma needs a total shake-up if it is to be relevant to our needs.
We have half-baked graduates who cannot construct a coherent argument, let alone spell.
This truth is as clear as the backside of a goat.
The new vice-chancellor Sharon Siverts, surely has her work cut out.
But it looks like Scrutator is not the only one seeing the mess at that high school.
Enter Kelebone Maope.
Maope, as a former law lecturer when NUL was still at its zenith, is surely qualified to say the things that he said about law graduates from that institution.
“Some of the things taking place in courts are so embarrassing that I am not comfortable talking about them,” Maope said.
“There are some good judges indeed but I cannot feel ashamed to say there are those whose things are misty. If you look at the way language is used in courts . . . it is embarrassing.”
The School of Law has not progressed beyond its vision adopted in 1966, Maope said.
“Things have not changed until now and I am of the view that training should be improved,” he said.
Well, Scrutator said it but Maope said it even better.
Maope, like Scrutator, thinks there
is need to revamp the way lawyers are trained.
Why should young lawyers, who have no clue on how the judiciary operates, be unleashed on unsuspecting clients?
My boss says some of the letters of demand that he gets every week from these young lawyers claiming that their clients had been defamed are plain embarrassing, with frightening grammatical boobs.
Such greenhorns should surely go through a form of cadetship under the tutelage of more experienced legal practitioners.
Anybody who argues against the wisdom of this proposal should have his head examined.
The Almighty looked at a Lesotho football referee’s work, and look, he was very pleased.
He then looked at the pay-slip and he wept.I hope this is no sacrilege!
For running 90 minutes like a headless chicken, our premier league referees and their assistants are earning a measly M100 each per match, money only enough to buy about 20 loaves of bread. This thankless task has its own pressures.
These referees endure insults, threats to their lives and once in a while are chased all over the stadiums by rowdy supporters.
All this for M100?
I know wages here are pathetically low but the Lesotho Football Association must surely come up with a “danger allowance” to cater for these referees.
Muammar Gadaffi, who was infamously described by one United States president as a “mad dog”, has really gone bonkers.
Does the man have any grey matter between his ears?
His idea of a United States of Africa, with him obviously as the chief, is as warped as they come.
It’s good it remained a dream otherwise he would have turned the whole continent into a mad house.
Unfolding events in his Libyan fiefdom, where his family had ruled unchallenged for four decades until some brave souls decided to have a go at him, confirm the long-held suspicion that the man is nuts.
When you suppress your own people that long you tend to live in Cloud Cuckooland, detached from reality.
This is why he cannot comprehend that his own people, fed up with his rule, can stand up and say enough is enough.
But instead of accepting that his time is up, he unleashes a murderous campaign against his own people.
No word came from that club of dictators misnamed the African Union until the bombs began raining on Tripoli.
Back to our high school.
It is an unforgivable sin in academia for anyone to pass someone’s work as their own.
The very first thing you are told when you enter the hallowed grounds of a university is that one must avoid the sin of plagiarism like a plague.
You are introduced to the concept of acknowledging things that you “borrow” elsewhere in quotations and in your bibliography and footnotes.
Now for a university student to copy someone’s work and pass it as their own is a gross sin worthy of the worst form of punishment imaginable.
But some dunderheads at the high school in Roma seem not to appreciate this.
This is why 80 of them failed to graduate last year and are now being hauled before the university’s disciplinary committee to face charges of “copying without permission”.
Scrutator will not shed any tears for these nincompoops.
Instead of studying, these students spent their time drinking themselves silly with our hard earned tax money in nearby pubs dotted around the campus every day of their lives.
And when exam time comes they think they can get away with murder.
Management at NUL is said to be worried sick by the high incidents of cheating during exams at the institution.
Scrutator feels sorry for Siverts.
Her days of peaceful sleep are surely over.
Welcome to the high school madam!
