According to an old Chinese saying, a Facebook selfie of youthful Botswana Democratic Party activists living it up aboard a Botswana Defence Force transport plane is worth a thousand words. However, days after the fact, Wynter Mmolotsi went one better and used his expertise in facial expressions and nutritional science to render forensic analysis of what was happening on that now controversial presidential flight. Through such analysis, the Umbrella for Democratic Change’s parliamentary candidate for Francistown South is able to tell that some of the people in the pictures were feeling nauseous after consuming what he has determined to have been more than hearty helpings of exotic food that they were unaccustomed to before the flight attendant served it.
“Bangwe ba bone go bonala gore ba kgotshe ebile ba a sel’lega. Go a jewa ke bo mogoma dijo tse e leng lantlha ba di bona,” Mmolotsi told a UDC rally in Gaborone last Saturday. The Voice hasn’t helped matters by captioning one picture with “It’s our time to eat”, the words being taken from a statement supposedly made by the BDP’s Secretary General, Mpho Balopi, sometime last year. In this picture, the party’s campaign manager, Alec Seametso, is reposed in an aisle seat, his manly hand splayed out over the right side of his tummy as if he is massaging it.
Unless one is familiar with his resting-face expression, it would be difficult to tell whether the look Seametso gave the camera betrays any kind of post-meal discomfort. In another picture, two members of the party’s youth wing, Andy Boatile and Bridget Smith, incline their heads towards each other in a comradely fashion. He is expressionless and she is smiling widely as her head rests lightly on his left temple.
