By Kabelo Mollo
About a month ago my friend Tlali Mapetla or “Mr Maps” as he’s known to the music world released a seminal piece of music titled “Seriti”. A timeous reminder to anyone that will listen that we should always remain dignified in our dealings and maintain our integrity. It’s what we will be judged on in general as we go forward.
It’s an important piece of art that cracks open the existential crisis Lesotho seems to be facing at the moment. Where is our “Seriti” as a nation? Who is the custodian thereof? Every single day on every medium we are told of one scandal or another involving a senior government official or a politician or both. It’s almost become standard.
In fact, so bad has it got, that a moral compass has gone to accept little scandal. So long as the crime is victimless we can see a way of justifying that.
But, it’s not just senior officials busy with some form of corruption. We’re deep in it too. I said recently on Twitter, we don’t hate corruption, we hate not benefiting from it. Perhaps that’s a sign of how much it’s become part of our everyday lives, or maybe that’s a sign of our inherent greed. Maybe it’s just the nature of capitalism where the more you have, the more you want, and the more you want, the more you need.
Lately even the church can’t claim any moral authority. Church leaders are being coopted into squabbles and issues they ought not to descend into. Even beyond that, the church is taking too long to pronounce itself on matters that require progressive, liberal leadership. And often when it does, it’s a conservative diatribe that isn’t relevant in an ever changing society.
I keep wondering when the moral decay got so bad that it even became acceptable to steal from our elderly. We are told stories of pension days being pay days for crooks and scammers who are robbing the most vulnerable in our society. These kinds of crimes speak to the very bottom of the barrel in terms of ethics and moral compass. They tell the tale of a real lack of “seriti”. So when Nuch and Maps try to do a call to action imploring the society to bring it back, one can’t help but think of matters like that.
In the midst of the graft and criminality, there’s the even more difficult question of faithfulness related to our relationships. We take vows and pledge our faithfulness and commitment to lifelong partners and then we sacrifice those vows at the altar of immediate gratification. In his book “My Life” Bill Clinton speaks of why he engaged in the affair with Monica Lewinsky and his simple but contrite answer is that “I could”. In other words, he chose to.
The converse of that is of course to choose not to. The aim of this column is not to preach, nor do I claim some kind of moral high ground because like I said, I hate not benefiting from corruption more than innate actual corruption, but this had to be said. Specifically, in relation to the question of Seriti.
We will do well as a society to find it once again. We will do very well indeed to return to that moral high ground we ceded to inevitability. Thank you to Maps, Nuch Mothepu and Mansa Kunta for the reminder. Not a moment too soon!
