Today we take lessons in semantics and then apply them to a political speech shared on this column last week. We shall keep matters light and make complex concepts accessible to the reader. I use the term semantics in a linguistical sense to mean a linguistics study of meaning. I don’t use it to mean, meaning dependent on the speaker, as when lay people say: It is a matter of semantics. We start here: You can refer to many entities: people and things, using a single term in the singular form without contradiction and impropriety. For instance you can use the word student to refer to any one person who qualifies to be identified as a student. If for instance I say: “If you are a student please stand up”. It won’t be surprising if fifty students stood up, though I had requested for a student to stand up. This is the case since each one of the fifty students that stood up identifies himself/herself as a student. We shall pursue this matter no further here, save to emphasis that a single referring expression can be used to identify multiple objects.
Let us explore a different route. It is possible to refer to a single entity: a person or a thing, using different terms/referring expressions without any contradiction or problem. For instance, a man may be a father, a son, a husband, a manager, a bishop all at the same time. Example number two: Here I use the name and the identity of my good friend Tebogo Sebego. I abuse his friendship and kind heart to make a semantics problem clearer to the reader. Tebogo Sebego is (1) my friend (2) a University of Botswana alumni (3) a lawyer (4) the President of the BFA (5) the husband to Tebogo Lebotse-Sebego and (6) a father to his kids.
Now all the six (6), we shall call them characteristics, identify one physical person. This single physical person called Tebogo Sebego attracts different labels: my friend, a University of Botswana alumni, a lawyer, the President of the BFA, the husband to Tebogo Lebotse-Sebego and a father to his kids. Let’s confuse things a bit. Just because Tebogo Sebego is my friend, it doesn’t mean that my friend is Tebogo Sebego. It could be, but it doesn’t have to be. What I mean by this is just because you have found my friend it doesn’t mean you have found Tebogo Sebego, you may have found one of my friends who isn’t Tebogo Sebego.
Importantly, this means that my friend and Tebogo Sebego may refer to one person, but they do not mean the same thing. Just because the name Tebogo Sebego and the expression the BFA President refer to the same individual, it doesn’t mean that they mean the same thing. Tebogo Sebego is a father to his kids as himself and not as the BFA President. Does that make sense? When Tebogo Sebego appears in court, he can appear as a lawyer on behalf of his client or he can appear as the BFA president to give evidence on behalf of the Association he leads. He can attract praise or reproach solely as the BFA president, separate from him as a husband or him as a dad. This distinction is important for the kind of commentary I proceed to make on the speech by one Alec Seametso (the BDP campaign manager) that attacks Kgosi Tawana II.
Following on the logic above, there is a distinction between Kgosi Tawana II and the UDC politician Tawana Moremi. The two identities refer to one individual but they are different and must be kept separate. As Kgosi Tawana II of the Batawana, he is an embodiment of the culture of his morafe. An attack on him is an attack on the morafe that he leads. An attack on Tawana Moremi, the UDC politician, is legitimate if he is attacked politically by his political opponents. It would obviously offend the UDC politicians and supporters, but that is understandable. Let us move to Alec Seametso’s attack. Was it an attack on Tawana the kgosi or the politician? Let us inspect what he says: “gore motho ke kgosi; mme e le kgosi e e senyegileng e e sa kgalemelweng; e le kgosi e e senang botho; e le kgosi e e lonyatso. Rona ka Setswana re itse gore kgosi ke kgosi ka batho… Tawana fa e ne e le kgosi o ko a tlotla Kgosi Khama, a sa tsamaye a mo roga ka fa tlase ga ditlhare; le rona re ne re se na go tla go mo roga.” There is sufficient evidence from this quotation that Seametso is attacking Tawana in his capacity as a kgosi, not just as a politician. This we see in his repetitive reference to Tawana as kgosi. Not only that, Seametso is very well aware that he, together with other speakers, is insulting Kgosi Tawana. He actually confesses to it in a veiled justification: “le rona re ne re se na go tla go mo roga.” We also know that Seametso was not mainly directing his words at the BDP faithful, but to the Batawana as a morafe. He says:
“Kgosi e ya nyena ga e a senyega e bolosokane, o senyegetse matlakaleng ka ntata ya nyena… lo paletswe ke go kgalemela ngwana. Ngwana o tebelegane; jaanong e bile gompieno o senyegela matlakaleng.” We know Kgosi Tawana II is kgosi of the Batawana and that it is most appropriate in Sengwaketse dialect to refer to his subjects as “Kgosi e ya nyena…” He uses the term bolosokane, a term synonymous with sugakane, to characterize Kgosi Tawana II. Not only that, he sees Tawana as ngwana yo o tebeleganeng. The word tebelegana means to rent apart as in a cloth. It is a Sengwaketse expression reserved for a disrespectful child with a rotten character. The final insult that Seametso delivers to the Batawana is to call them Matawana, worse to their faces. He says: “…lo a go bodiwa dipotso kwa legodimong … rraetsho kgosikgolo a robale ka kagiso, o a go lo bona ka leitlho le le maswe Matawana.” Alec Seametso is a Mongwaketse man from Kgosing in Ntsweng. Since he identified himself as from Kgosing many have mistaken this to mean that he is from the Kanye royal house when in fact Kgosing in Kanye is understood to mean a plethora of makgotla in the vicinity of the main Bangwaketse royal kgotla.
The obvious danger here is that one might think that a man from the Ngwaketse royal house has insulted the Batawana kgosi. A more appropriate approach to deal with this matter is the one proposed by the Bangwaketse themselves. They ought to reprimand their child and send the message to all in active politics to show respect to all dikgosi. A distinction must be sustained between individuals as dikgosi and their functional capacities as politicians. Dikgosi must be given the respect that is due their traditional status and office.
