Many Batswana may not know this, but the recently departed griot Chinua Achebe had a lot to say to us and our country. Sadly, while many have come across his views, few have been able to understand what he meant because the great man spoke in tongues. In his seminal work, Things Fall Apart, Achebe laid bare the debilitating effects of duplicity by a few. This, as is happening in Botswana, leads the many to end up believing in their hopelessness and helplessness. We perpetuate, wittingly or otherwise, this kaleidoscope of deceit.
You see, while the colonial masters left some years ago, there are now latter day citizen colonialists who are continuing where their masters left off: plundering their own people. In many other cases, the descendants of the colonialists and the Chinese in particular, whom we gather were being defended the other day, are also in cahoots with our so-called leaders. One only has to glance at the “President’s Housing Appeal” list, which is published with monotonous regularity by the state owned Daily News, to get a feel of the chummy relations.
The Nigerian writer reminded us that Botswana has produced many Okonkwos, men and women who have tried to show the rest of their fellow citizens that they are being short-changed by seemingly benevolent leaders. However, the Okonkwos, like the one in Things Fall Apart, fail to have us see the light because we are too trusting of the leadership. We are, therefore, not any different to Ikemefuna who was felled by Okonkwo’s machete to whom he ran believing that his “father” would save him. This act Okonkwo also reminds us that seemingly strong leaders sometimes succumb to the head mentality: they want to belong. Like our Botsalo Ntuane, once considered an┬á osu, who could not resist the temptation of falling into line, Okonkwo kills Ikemefuna. Obierika tells Okonkwo that he should never have had a hand in the killing of Ikemefuna. Young Ntuane, was in all probability, told the same with respect to leaving either of his political parties. He is now lying low with the hope that we will forget his indiscretions, or shenanigans, before he makes a comeback. His though, unlike Okonkwo’s, is a fictitious banishment to Mbanta and forget his political dithering we will.
Other characters resembling Ogbuefi Ugonna, a once worthy leader of Umoufia “who had thought of the Holy Feast in terms of drinking and eating” hence his becoming a christian include Robert Molefhabangwe, Guma Moyo, Patrick Masimolole, Dikgang Phillip Makgalemele and Reggie Reatile. A curious bunch of chaps it has to be said. Motlotlegi Reatile, by the way, looked out of sorts over a week ago on national television when campaigning for his new comrades in the late Hon. Maxwell Motowane’s constituency, an election whose outcome should be causing political mayhem by now.
Here is the other thing, some of our opposition leaders, like Nwoye who “had been attracted to the new faith from the first day but kept it a secret”, seem to be conforming surreptitiously to the looting of our Republic. For example, when fake dust was being kicked up in Parliament about the awarding of some tenders at the BDF, the silence from one former Leader of the Opposition, Dumelang Saleshando, and many others on his side was deafening, was it not? Themba Joina, however, appears to be an exception. As to when he will become an MP, only Batswana know.
Okonkwo, even with his flaws, also represents┬á those of our leaders who soldier on but are let down by ordinary Batswana who maybe much like Unoka and prefer to lazy about drinking alcohol, not doing anything to improve their lot. ┬áOkonkwo kills himself in frustration and I bet that people like Knight Maripe, Peba Sethantsho, Kenneth Koma, Motsamai Mpho while they died naturally, the frustration of seeing Batswana not do anything to “free” themselves ate into their lifespans. Are Batswana also agbala? Men (and women) who have taken no title and are not interested to redeem themselves?
┬áUnoka is told by the Priestess Chika that “when your neighbours go out with their axe to cut down virgin forests, you sow your yams on exhausted farms that take no labour to clear. They cross seven rivers to make their farms; you stay at home and offer sacrifices to a reluctant soil. Go home and work like a man”. You would think that Achebe was speaking to Ipelegeng workers, whose view of their existence is a metaphor for that of many other Batswana. They would probably shout back at him by saying “Hold your peace!”┬á The fat cakes, drinks and extended hours of sleep are just too good to be true. As Ronald Reagan once put it, we appear to be a people that would rather “live on its knees than die on its feet”.
Achebe also warned us about the land issue and the under-handedness that so often goes with it. On his return from exile in Mbanta, Okonkwo asks his friend Obierika what had happened “to the piece of land in dispute” after the white man had hanged one Aneto. “The white man’s court has decided that it should belong to Nnama’s family, who had given much money to the white man’s messengers and interpreter” Obierika responds. Joe Serema and the group of youth who are championing the matter of land acquisition may have also now come to realise this. So may have Batlokwa and many others. Some individuals, however, aided by our own people at the expense of their own, have acquired hundreds of plots in a short space of time; the Delta, we hear, has been overrun by foreigners; rich farm land, or whatever is there of it, is in foreign hands, and; of late there is this boreholes saga where the motive appears to be to dispossess the poor because some valuable mineral has been found in the area. We could go on…
Also, while the “lunatic religion” with its “mad logic of the Trinity” has its usefulness, Achebe told Batswana that it can also be used to blind reason with Christians falling into the trap of propping up and even advancing the hoodwinking of people into accepting their meaningless existence. Take, for example, the recent overzealous act by the UCCSA which, instead of donating to the poor directly as any church would be expected to, rushed to the Government Enclave for a helping hand. Theirs, one guesses, was a moment of religious sycophancy. We must forgive them. But, this is what happens when a political leadership is succeeding in projecting itself as the “be-all and end-all” of our existence, to paraphrase Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Almost everyone wants to belong.
It may take us a while longer to realise, as the Igbo saying goes, that “when a man says yes his chi says yes also”. Until then, we will remain like the efulefu. Worthless men and women who are happy to be part of an order that apparently treats them like equals. While the elders dip their hands here and there and we get blankets, “two and halves” etcetera, we think we have arrived and unwittingly perpetuate the plundering.
Nonetheless, there will be a few who see beyond these acts of “benevolence” and realise that their problems are too many and complex to be addressed in the current manner. Unfortunately, because they are few, if they try to say anything the majority typically says “gatwe go sha kae?” similar to the men of Umoufia who had apparently “remained true to their fathers” and were plotting to fight the colonial masters. However, when court messengers show up at the meeting with an order from the white man to disperse and Okonkwo reacts angrily by killing the head messenger thinking that his act would inspire the other men to fight, they instead whisper, “Why did he do it?”
Okonkwo realises at that point that he and all else that was Umoufia is finished.
The reality is that our leaders, on both sides of the aisle, have learnt well from their colonial predecessors. Ordinarily, therefore, we should treat them like “strange men” for they have broken up our “clan and spread destruction among us”.
So, Achebe reminds us in his Anthills of the Savannah that the value of literary education is to sharpen our “perception of the evidence before our eyes”. In Anthills of the Savannah he also talks of “the absurd raffle-draw that apportioned the destinies of post-colonial African societies”.
Despite being able to see this unfair and disproportionate apportionment, Batswana are much like the people of Umoufia “who did not feel as strongly as Okonkwo about the new dispensation. The white man had indeed brought a lunatic religion, but he had also built a trading store and for the first time palm-oil and kernel became things of great price”. The irony of this is telling:
Apparent convenience comes at a price but the people of Umoufia fail to realise this. They are now being made to pay for what they used to get for free. Ordinary Batswana are also paying a similar price.  While it was written some 50 years ago,  through the widely read Things Fall Apart, Achebe tried to lay bare our lives using history so that we could take appropriate action when circumstances call for it. His Things Fall Apart is, therefore, not just for entertainment as some often believe.
Bizarrely, Batswana are just not bothered to act against the injustice being exercised on them. By the time we wake up, Zimbabwe will look like kindergarten. In the meantime though, let us have our own palm-wine in the form of blankets, radios, workshops on opulence and a supermarket here or there whose owners’ understanding of corporate governance, one must observe, particularly the relationship between business and politics, is choppy. This is an entity that appears to be as far as possible from pure and┬á as far as possible from simple.
Jaanong bagaetsho, for the last time, those who now hear Achebe’s warning say ‘Yaa!’… Silence… One day someone may well write a book called The Pacification of the People of the Republic of Botswana.
*Mpho Kgabo is a nom de plume.
