For the past three days the social media has been abuzz with heated debate on the photo-shopped picture depicting President Ian Khama standing semi-naked in from of parliament buildings and giving the thumps up to the country’s 50th independence celebrations. A photo-shopped picture falls in the category of caricatures, which therefore means it is a distorted representation of facts. It is often used by graphic artists to parody people in public life. It can also be grouped in the category of opinions, in that, whatever it depicts solely represents the views of the creator and not necessarily facts as they obtain. It is no different from this piece that you are reading because here I am only expressing my views that cannot be taken as the gospel truth. It is things through my eyes and other people may see the same things differently. It is very clear from the comments posted by a majority of Batswana that they are against the said photo which was posted online by someone using a Facebook page. Many people who have expressed their anger and disapproval of the photo have pinned their arguments on Botho. They say the picture is an insult to the president. They say the president must not be depicted in that distasteful and degrading manner because he is an elder and a leader.
They argue that everyone who cannot tolerate their parent being depicted in such a manner should not defend the artist who put together that photo. They say it is against our culture and norms to be seen to be disrespectful to the elders and more importantly the leaders. They argue that we should not condone such behaviour on the basis other countries have come to accept such divergent and unpopular behaviour towards their leaders. Perhaps let me point out this soon that I too find the photo to be distasteful and disrespectful of the president. However, I refuse to just condemn the originator of that photo-shopped picture and stop there. By dwelling on attacking the person who came up with that photo and condemning those who support him or her, we are only concentrating on the symptoms without attempting to diagnose the cause. For us to adequately address this disease of disrespect, we need to first establish the cause. Let us try and establish how we contracted this disease. What is the root cause of this disease? The question we should be asking ourselves is why a citizen would find it proper to disrespect a head of state.
We have had three presidents before Ian Khama and none of them has ever been disrespected in this manner. Why him? That is the question we need to ask if we are to cure this bad behaviour. Shouting that it is not our culture to disrespect elders will not solve the problem. The same Setswana that says we shouldn’t disrespect the elders goes on to remind the elders that for them to earn the respect of the young, they need to return the favour. How then can we jump to condemn this disrespectful artist without first establishing if he has been disrespected by the elders? Maybe all he or she is doing is just applying what he or she has copied or learnt from the elders. You see I have a problem with people who regard the president as an equal to every other elder only when it suits their arguments but when the president has to enjoy some of the privileges that are not accorded other elders, they revert to the notion that he is not an ordinary citizen. You cannot expect my father to receive the same treatment as the president for the simple reason they are not equal before the law and the society.
My father is a leader of his family while the president is the leader of the whole nation. My father is safe from insults and disrespect because he leads a small number of people while the president, unfortunately, has a large number of people to lead and it is only common that when dealing with such a large number of people, you can’t expect sanity from all of them. Presidents are not born for that position. They put themselves up for election into that position and as such they need to be ready to accept and embrace everything that comes with that job. One of the things that come with being president is that you will have among the people you lead, some with bad manners. For as long as the president embraces people who ululate at him, he must be ready to embrace those who urinate on his dignity. We didn’t choose our parents so we need to suck up to them and be humble before them even where they piss us of because you know what, they are the only parents we will ever have in our lives. It is totally different with a president. A president is someone we can replace and as such the level of tolerance we must exercise towards them cannot and should not be put at par with the one we extend to parents. Like I mentioned earlier, while I do not condone such degrading depiction of our president, as has happened in that photo shopped picture, my main worry is not that it has happened. I’m more worried with why it happened. Perhaps it’s about time our president introspects and asks himself why these kids brazenly disrespect him. Botho alone cannot rectify the problem.
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