I read an interesting article by Mr Kenneth Dipholo in Sunday Standard of 3rd October titled “Stupid voters and chimpanzee spins decide election outcome”.
The opinion of the writer strikes the truth on mark, and that is what makes his article an interesting read. I pose this rhetorical question as a rejoinder: are the voters really stupid, or are we all unsuspecting victims of a colossal deception?
I have written about this before in this paper where I expressed the opinion that we have all been fooled into believing that there is a wonderful system of governance called democracy. Democracy simply does not exist, anywhere in the world.
It is just an illusion, a dream we all love, except that one has to be awake to experience it. It is machinery used by and for a few people in any country to legitimise their abusive rule over others. Elections are a key part of the machinery.
Once you elect your Member of Parliament or councilor, you have served your purpose to him like a spent chewing gum. He does not need you until the next elections. He goes to parliament with an erroneous belief that your vote has given him a blanket mandate to decide anything and everything for you, including specifically making laws and policies that bind you, without any form of consultation with the people.
In fact, we have recently been awoken, rudely, to the reality that the picture is worse than we thought. Not only is it illusory to believe that we have a democracy, but it is tragically illusory to believe that your Member of Parliament makes laws on your behalf. The laws are made by, yet fewer people, who call themselves Cabinet.
They meet behind closed doors where your member of parliament may not even have access. These laws are then presented to parliament to rubberstamp, most of the time. Those privy to what goes on in cabinet say even then, still yet fewer people within the cabinet make all the decisions, behind yet other closed doors. The ordinary voter, who is poor and uneducated, often does not know these fine details about our democracy. But he is not stupid. The stupid person is the intellectual, middle class or other sufficiently informed person in the urban or pre-urban areas of this country who remains blind to this conspicuous truth about our democracy and character of our politicians, or he who is aware but does nothing about it. The ordinary voter knows and feels there is something wrong with the system.
He knows and feels that it is wrong for laws to be passed by a few people behind closed doors without his voice at a kgotla or other forum being heard. He feels it is wrong for laws and policies to be passed and implemented in a foreign language.
He feels that it is wrong for a national budget to be determined by just a few people who do not fully account to the nation for use of the money at the end of the budget period. He sees that his member of parliament really does not genuinely care for his interests. He sees the cheat, liar, drunkard, womaniser, woman beater, thief; you name it, in the character of his member of parliament or other aspirant politicians. He is sure that politicians are all about themselves.
They care for the interests of the population only to the extent such interests coincide with his. The ordinary voters, even the head boy at the cattle post or the maids who do our laundry see these things because they are not stupid.
Most of us have now awakened to these truths about Botswana democracy. The problem is that the majority of people have been indoctrinated into believing that what we call democracy is either the only or the best form of governance in the world, forgetting that there are many forms of governance that exist and still more may be custom made and developed to suit the needs of a people.
Thus the people go to the polls every five years believing that they are acting in accordance with a perfect system called democracy. They believe that it is a system cast in stone for us and cannot be changed. They genuinely believe that members of parliament and ministers have all the powers they hold themselves out to possess, including the moral responsibility to run our lives as they please without consultation.
The truth is that they do not have those powers. Unfortunately they are not challenged by anyone. In as much as we all have a constitutional right to vote, the reader must be reminded that he enjoys the corollary to that, being the right not to vote.
Yes we should not vote. If voting legitimises that which oppresses us, then we should not vote at all so that he who forms Government, (if government can legally be formed in such a situation) should not derive legitimacy from our actions.
It is only then that the people, stupid or not, can rid themselves of the system that oppresses them through deception and take back power to the people away from the politicians.
A basic rule of logic is that you cannot go to war with ammunition supplied by he who has caused you to be at war. Similarly, the people cannot rely on politicians, in their various clubs, to change the template of governance in Botswana to one where the people own and control government and not vice versa as is the case today. Our politicians do not have the moral ability, capability or political will to change and hand power to the people.
If any had, that would be visible in their manifestos and real life practices as individuals and as political parties. Voting a different political party into power will not make any significant difference to the ordinary Motswana, for so long as that power remains for the political party and not the people. It is comforting to observe that more and more people are seeing politicians for what they truly are and democracy for what it is: It is all a grand scheme of deception perpetuated at international level for so many years in order to allow colonial exploitation of a people, especially in Africa. It is a system that thrives in causing divisions in society through an institution called politics and a false philosophy called democracy.
It pits brother against brother, son against father, husband against wife and breaks down the family and traditional structures to create the most conducive environment for divide and rule.
If you have any doubt, then look at the way our politicians have treated and continue to treat the fathers of this country, DIKGOSI. It uses our own children in politics to serve unseen masters at our great expense whilst their (politicians’) perceived material benefit remains really cosmetic and short lived.
President Masire was almost auctioned off earlier this year despite the millions he allegedly received from DeBeers. It is time all Batswana say “NO, enough of your lies politicians”. KE NAKO. In Libya, Iran and elsewhere in the world leaders and the people have began to sing this tune.
They have begun to expose even the falsehood in the very existence and purpose of the United Nations and the false mask worn by the United States of America.
There is no logic in having the UN Assembly agreeing on a resolution only to have one of the five or all permanent members of the Security Council VETO against the resolution, this is utter nonsense (that’s why Muammar Gaddafi tore the UN Chatter last year in front of the Assembly).
Stop looking too far for the number one World Peace Destabilizer, who uses war to create wealth for himself, not even for his country. Sudan, DRC, Angola, Somalia, the list is endless, these countries don’t manufacture Uzis, AK 47s, Land Mines Missiles and many more. Please do your selves a favour and check where these weapons are made and who owns the companies. Politicians right under our noses have signed an agreement to the effect that any American Soldier should not be prosecuted neither in Botswana nor the World Court of Justice, even if they were to rape or murder your son, daughter, wife, brother, sister, mother or father.
Is the WCJ meant for African leaders only? Presidents and Prime Ministers from the West have kill millions of innocent soles even to this day (who’s fooling who).
The war in Iraq, where was the so cold UN, 65 aggressive Wars by the so called super powers and the UN has never taken action against the perpetrators where was or is the UN? USA Boast of half of the nuclear war heads in the whole world combined, what is the UN doing about this crap.
Leave Iran alone and focus on the devils in a sheep’s skin, in any case they wouldn’t dare for obvious reasons. President Obama said at the recent UN assembly that they will reduce their nuclear war heads, that’s not good enough; we want a nuclear weapon free world.
The mask of falsehood is gradually being wiped from the face of this earth. Let us all refuse to legitimise false rule by declining to vote. You only need the imagination of an armature chess player or high school maths student to see the logical pattern of events that will follow from this brave stance, once government lacks and is denied legitimacy by a people through outright rejection of the system. We need to stand together against this deception.
Once we align ourselves with individual clubs called political parties then effectively we dance the tune of the oppressor, and forever we shall remain oppressed.
We remain divided for easy exploitation by the system. In one family there are brother, sister and father all belonging to different political parties? Look around you! That is how the system succeeds as has been the case since independence.
The opposition parties in Botswana know better than anybody what I’m talking about here. They have captured whole populations under their nets but cannot unite all these people for a single common goal. The people remain divided in these political camps and listen daily to petty quibbling and ego generated infightings, whilst the oppressor (the system with its unseen masters) thrives. “An insincere and evil friend is more to be feared than a wild beast; a wild beast may wound your body, but an evil friend will wound your mind” – Buddha.
“Ke nako”
