Our national Anthem is a powerful message to us all who pay attention to what it says: “fatshe leno la rona, ke mpho ya modimo, ke boswa jwa bo rrarona……tsogang banna…emang basadi…”. It is our land, a gift from God, an inheritance of our forefathers. It calls upon the men folk of this country to wake up. I would like to discuss the latter in the light of the topical constitutional challenge.
In the course of November 2011, I wrote a series of similarly worded letters to the majority of the print and radio media, law society, Christian Churches through the Mochudi fraternity , Muslim Church , Ditswanelo for human Rights , Dikgosi of Botswana and outside .The same letter was given to various members of parliament, Ntlo ya Dikgosi, various private individuals across the racial line including private lawyers and various politicians and to foreign embassies. The letter was accompanied by a copy of the Court documents founding the constitutional challenge .
This letter contains a humble plea to the recipient to help. The media houses who have the letter can confirm this truth. None of the organisations mentioned have written back or acknowledged receipt of the letter in one way or another, whilst some have silently offered some kind of help which I hereby acknowledge. I accept that no one was obliged to accede to my plea or respond.
History will however record this truth that these organisations and persons mentioned and all who they affect, were made aware of the constitutional challenge and were specifically requested to offer wisdom.
In addition, I have been on radio several times to date, and conducted wide public meetings including at the university of Botswana where I have spoken about the constitutional case and addressed questions from the public.
The civil society of Botswana thus cannot complain of being unaware of the constitutional case or having not been consulted or asked to help, as I have done before several years ago.
Many of us desire peace and the necessary transformations in our society that will bring about the peace. I often ask the men of this country, individually and collectively in the organisations they lead: what is your liberation plan to bring about the change and the freedom we so much desire? I never get answers, but lots of talk and excuses about no money.
I hear recurring complaint but never a workable plan of how we may liberate ourselves from this oppressive constitution. The opposition political parties have been trying for 45 years to unseat the ruling party, and have been talking about constitutional change, but they keep breaking apart in their journey due to the egos of men. Various civil society organisations speak of injustice, corruption, and social decay, but what is the plan to free us from the source of injustice?
Dikgosi talk about suppression of culture and denigration of their status, but what are they doing to solve their situation and what plan do they have to bring finality to their historical plight? What did they do when one or some of them stood up against the source of their oppression now in 2012, and in the past – 1932 and 1966?
In previous articles I have demonstrated two important concepts. The first is that Kgosi Ian Kgama Seretse Kgama has shown us through the Puso Commision this truth that we are heading for serious disaster as a society unless we change our self-destructive ways.
The second is that I have seen (like others before me) the root cause of our social problems- fraud. Fraud causes havoc everywhere, and worse if it sits in the foundational law. A society that cannot grasp and understand this basic truth of science and human experience is doomed to collapse.
Lessons leant from the physics of resonance and science of nature are these that when you shake a pole at its foundation enough for it to catch momentum, it will shake on its own and reach a resonance where it will naturally break by itself.
It is the same with the constitution and any social phenomena. You shake it at its foundation with the truth; for, it is the truth that shall set you free: First by proving it to be a fraud in a forum (Court) where detractors cannot refuse the facts of fraud without producing contrary evidence. The second stage is to educate the public about the fraud on a solid foundation of proven facts (as opposed to political rhetoric), or rather facts which the state has failed to refute.
Thirdly is for the public to drum up the issue of fraud (like the shaking pole) so much to a point where it catches resonance that will naturally collapse the fraudulent foundation. Our united attention to this phenomena is absolutely essential if we truly desire freedom.
This exercise does not require any violence or money but just commitment to the truth by the men and women of this country. This is how a people free themselves from an oppressive imposed constitution without killing each other or falling victim to foreign influence that promotes war as it has happened in Rwanda and elsewhere in Africa. These are the lesson I sought to share with my fellow countrymen, but unfortunately some believe it is just some social joke to corrupt and laugh away.
We cannot intelligently hope to have a free and fair general elections when the foundational law is a proven fraud, or in the very least, where the state has failed to gainsay the accusations of fraud but instead gone out to suppress the truth of the fraud by refusing to comply with Court orders.
We cannot intelligently hope to have truth and justice in our Courts where justice comes at a price in a foreign language and foreign procedures introduced by a fraudulent law. We cannot hope to have peace and collective prosperity until we depart from the path of deceit laid by the constitution and until we start to respect each other as humans and respect the wishes of others not to be subjected to the foreign culture of the constitution in their daily lives. Those who enjoy foreign culture should be free to live it without imposing it on others.
Thus, no matter what we individually believe within our political and sociological ideologies, we need to face this truth someday about the fraudulent nature of our founding law. If the men of this country (I included) could temporarily shelve their pride and egos and rather unite around the truth, the constitution will surrender sooner in an orderly fashion, as opposed to collapsing chaotically consequent to the forces of nature.
The women of this country are increasingly agitated at the lack of responsibility displayed by the men of Botswana. They are fast preferring foreign men. The women keep reminding us of the national anthem- tsogang banna. They blame the men for destroying this country with their egos and shallow outlook towards life.
They say the men spend so much energy in petty gossip, posturing, power games, and ever quick to jeer at the failures of others who have undertaken a difficult noble course. The men do this upon a huge sacrifice to fundamental values.
We have seen this truth with Mr Motswaledi and now Kgosi Kgafela II. The men will go as far as gleefully highlighting your failures, without acknowledging the obvious good lessons learnt. The men of this country watch as their society degenerates into chaos. They watched in 1932 as Kgosi Bathoeng and Tshekedi singularly struggled to oppose the same colonial laws I am presently opposing and in 1966 when Kgosi Bathoeng, Linchwe II, Mokgosi, and Gaborone stood up against the present constitution.
My secondary school maths and physics teachers taught me how to improve my grades by taking lessons from all the answers I got wrong. I hope that a substantial number of Batswana out there have grasped the lessons learnt from the constitutional case and that they will resonate the revelations of fraud sufficiently until the government appreciates the wisdom to change the constitution without delay.
The journey undertaken to reach this point in the challenge unfortunately necessitated inevitable friction with various people tasked to defend the system. That is a natural consequence of truth sailing an environment where the people are accustomed to the foreign constitution and its values and where such people are naturally blinded from appreciating the conflict in the perspective of the ordinary Motswana.
Therefore, since the educational point (fraud) has been made (subject to our right of appeal to the Court of appeal), as much as whatever point the government sought to make, we need to work on peace and I wish all those we have hurt along the journey, could understand things at this spiritual level, and accept our permanently extended hand of peace, to allow the intelligent deployment of scarce resources towards building a future.
The constitution remains a satanic document that is making us fight amongst each other without noticing. Its Romanic origins can be traced to the book of Revelations 13, whilst the anguish and devastation it causes are recorded in the book of lamentations (Dilelo/Dikhutsafalo) chapter 5. Let he who has eyes to see and ears to hear discern wisdom. The microcosmic conflict between the leaders we see today will eventually evolve into a chaotic macrocosmic fight amongst the public, until the men of this country wake up to their call of the national anthem: Tsogang banna!
*Kgafela II is Kgosi Kgolo of Bakgatla
