Many a times Life has afforded me the opportunity to witness, Family, Communities and Nations attempt to dictate or determine destinies, morals, believes and ideals of individuals, Communities, Nations and Organizations and many a times I have witnessed these intentions ending up in dismal failures and falling gradually away like leafs of a huge Mowana tree falling off in Autumn.
Families have on several occasions tried to dictate to their Children on who to marry and who not to marry, who to associate with and who not to associate with, which professional carreer to follow etc and most of the time if not all the time the repercussions of such endeavors by families end up dismantling the family into fragments.
Communities have norms of moral behavior, dress codes and behavioral standards which of course are of utmost fundamental importance for us and our Children to use as a framework from which we can base on. But like a priest who gets carried away by the attention he gets at a well attended funeral, (Tse tsa bo S’banibani), at times Society also crosses the line and stupidly and recklessly ignores a basic fundamental fact, that we are different as individuals, we think differently and that we derive pleasure and satisfaction from completely different sources. You cannot enjoy or derive satisfaction from life by giving the second person next to you pleasure and satisfaction at the expense of thyself, in certain instances though. Nature automatically prescribes and describes the benchmark as to how far we can go as far as that is concerned and this is by my observation the fundamental error that society makes in judging individuals or setting standards. It is at junctures like these that it becomes clear that Science has a direct link to real life situations that absolutely cannot be defied, I mean the basic principle of magnetism comes into play that like poles repel and unlike poles attract while Economics rests on the principle that price is determined by demand and supply, that nobody should dare temper with a price for a commodity besides what is determined by the principle. An overly capitalist friend of mine Dichaba called me the other day complaining about the scarcity of tomatoes around Gabz and blamed it on Government effort to assist local farmers by closing down importations periodically. His assertion is that it is against Economics 101; let the demand determine the supply and the price. What perplexes me is we are very quick to acknowledge the rate at which globalization is effecting the speed at which change is travelling but refuse to accept the speed with which that change affects our morals and cultures.
Another friend of mine was diagnosed with HIV a short while before the discovery of ARV and the Doctor told him that he would live for a maximum of six months so I pleaded with him to stop the consumption of alcohol and he refused. He asked me how long I thought he would live if he quit alcohol and I said probably eighteen months. He said to me, it is better to live the last six months of my life with pleasure and satisfaction than to live a miserable last eighteen months without any derivation of pleasure and satisfaction and true to the Doctors prognosis my friend was lost to this world seven months later, may his soul rest in peace. He believed that without pleasure and satisfaction life was worthless and that is notwithstanding the fact that one has to earn that pleasure and satisfaction through hard work or smart thinking. Let us take a pause here and agree to disagree that pleasure and satisfaction are very much relative amongst human beings and acknowledge that should the human race have provision for this relativity then peace would be the order of day, bearing in mind of course that our individual pleasures and satisfactions are permitted so long as they do not in any way infringe on other individuals’ liberties and peace. I leave the verdict of this philosophy to the reader.
A lot of people that I know have devoted their lives to unrewarding endeavors and never have I come across any single one of them regretting having taken that course of life. But hey, this is not to say they were not disappointed by being not rewarded. Let us underline the difference between regret and disappoint. Kenneth Koma for many years spearheaded the BNF and as we all know he departed this world without any material reward from the BNF endeavour but a satisfactory fulfillment. The late White Kgopo, the late Duncan Senyatso and Simon Nkabinde (Matlhathini) to name a few, are men who have literally spent their lives in the music industry but died without having retrieved their envisaged material benefit from the music industry. I had the privilege of associating with them quite often but not once have I ever heard them regret the path they had chosen. Even in their last days they went about as usual and in reminisce I have come to adore their source of courage and inspiration, convictional passion which in my own words I sum up to call it splendid conviction.
The reason why they had no regrets is because they were passionate about what they were doing, they were never pushed nor forced to pursue those endeavors. The worst misery that a person can inflict unto themselves is to consider remuneration over and above your passion and conviction. This is not to say one should play ignorance to remuneration.
It is at this juncture that a make or break scenario confronts you head on and your wisdom for good judgment comes into action and your power of conviction goes on trial. It is that time in your life whereby you have to choose for yourself or your family, society or the world; they call it talking to your inner self or introspection. It is a point at which your wisdom for judgment goes to the ultimate test that will carve your road to destiny land forever. And like my Lawyer friend would put it, it is the zenith of your wisdom of judgment.
As a proud patriotic Motswana when it comes to conviction I have a very luxurious precedent to learn from and need not go any far. When our first President Sir Seretse Khama decided with splendid conviction that he wanted to marry our revered first Lady, Lady Ruth Khama, an avalanche of odds were piled against him but because of the conviction of love nothing deterred him from his choice of a wife. If my memory is correct he was the first Motswana to marry a white woman. It was against culture, family beliefs and national wish that he married from a different race, especially a white one. Today, all that is forgotten and Batswana are now ululating the offspring of that marriage and I don’t think that there’s a single Motswana who ever ponders to remember the total disapproval of the late marrying the late. Thanks to this powerful phenomenon called conviction which the splendor of is the pride of Batswana today.
It is here that I want the detractors of BMD to understand that the power of conviction is what has driven us to establish this Movement. Let me in a nutshell come to the rescue of those whose ears and brains are waxy. Winning elections is vital and uppermost in our ambitions just like becoming rich takes priority in their list of ambitions.
But losing elections will not at all bring us into any state of disarray or collapse. The beauty of it is that that our formation, like Sir Seretse Khamas marriage, is based on a very solid principle, conviction. But on second thought it makes me wonder that if people are so convinced that should we lose elections it will mean the end of BMD, is it really not characteristic of them. Is the BDP really safe with such characters, is it not probably a subconsciously subdued characteristic in them which in the event that the BDP loses elections they will also abandon it.
Why are they so concerned about what BMD members will do in the event that it loses elections? Their mindset gives me the impression that the word “lose” does not exist, neither in their vocabulary nor in any dictionary in their possession. We at BMD are realists, we know what we are vying for but we also know that in life you don’t always get things going your way. Spoilt and stupid are those who think and believe otherwise no wonder they are so blinded, myopic and bitter.
The BMD is comprised of human beings and not robots or monkeys. As human beings we know that you can be king like Saddam Hussein today and be a prisoner tomorrow. You can be rich today and be poor tomorrow. You can dominate the politics of a country like the Labor Party in the UK but some day you can be unseated by the influence of a minority party that never in history has governed nor come close to governing, (Take the story of David and Goliath). That it is not a miracle that a Black man is President of the US of A, that you can run an important Ministry for donkey years without allocating it a Minister. You can only accept these realities if you are human and not living in denial land. Only he/she who is human understands that the word evolution is not an imagination, it is a reality that goes with time and is cousin to the word change. But of course a robot is manmade and will only do what it is told to do and only believe what it is told to believe whereas a human being thinks what to believe and what not to believe, what to do and what not to-do, when to do and when not to do and that is the kind of membership espoused by BMD. Robots are totally not welcome because they will begin to breed offspring that don’t think for themselves and normally such offspring have a reproductive system of multiplying more rapidly than the thinkers thus end up ultimately outnumbering the thinkers.
When Mandela went to jail for his fight for freedom very few people participated in the struggle.
People should continue to be deceived by judging us by the numbers that are evident and use that as a yardstick at their own peril. The support the Movement has is more than the word massive. What is evident to our detractors now is not a light at the end of the tunnel but the headlamp of a very fast oncoming train. So chaps fasten your seatbelts.
Gomolemo Motswaledi, Botsalo Ntuane, Samson Guma Moyo, Wynter mmolotsi, Gilbert Mangole and Kabo Morwaeng have fought many a battles for men not for the sake of just being on their side but because they believed in their capabilities, principles and visions and sadly when the tide turned against them their mentors abandoned them to sink alone. Such is life and on it goes. Today it is evident that they were not followers but staunch believers and their continued march in pursuit of the very principles that them and their mentors espoused is an impeccable testimony of that belief.
Followers are those whom when the ship sinks abandon you like they never even boarded the ship.
This crew in the BMD does not comprise of followers but of believers. That’s where we differ gentlemen. I am addressing gentlemen only because I am yet to come across a serious vocal female critic of the BMD and my intention here is only to advice the stereotyped critics of the Movement. Thus this is a ship we cannot abandon. Should it sink we shall sink with it and should it cruise pleasantly to destination harmony land so will we travel gallantly with it because ours is not only a conviction but a very splendid one. We were never forced, coerced or influenced but it was rather out of our very deepest individualistic conviction that this is our movement and selflessly we shall serve it with or without reward.
