No news today
HIJINKS in Lesotho again. But we hope SADC will move cautiously this time. Last a South African-Botswanan joint task force moved in to quell a mutiny, they failed to rendezvous, got a bit lost and somehow managed to burn down most of Maseru.
This mountainous landlocked kingdom has a history of political turbulence. Many years ago when I happened to be there on an assignment, the country held its collective breath when, as time came for the news bulletin on the local radio station, the announcement came: "There is no news today. We will listen to light music."
A coup d'etat? No, a false alarm. The newsreader had paid a visit to the gents' on his way to the studio and unfortunately dropped into the urinal his sheaf of news items for the bulletin.
Later in the day, when the bulletin had either been dried out or retyped, the news went back to normal.
Phew!
Our man Joe
BACK in those days with the Argus Africa News Service, we had in Maseru a wonderful old man named Joe Molefe who was our on the spot correspondent.
In the lulls between the periodic coup attempts, massacres and mutinies, Joe himself was a hot news item. A PAC activist, he'd hot-footed it across the border from South Africa in the apartheid days, just ahead of the security police.
He was safe enough in Lesotho but couldn't leave. Lesotho was landlocked, surrounded by South Africa. All flights to the outside world were via Johannesburg. So there he was stuck for many years. His wife was matron of a big Johannesburg hospital and she would come to Lesotho every weekend.
He would encounter South African agents in the bar of the Maseru Holiday Inn. "Come back, Joe, all is forgiven." But Joe wasn't buying it.
It was not an ideal situation, made worse by the fact that the Lesotho government of the time didn't much like Joe either. They could hardly hand him back to the apartheid regime but they found him troublesome – writing reports for the outside world about what was going on; also – or so they suspected – sympathising with the political opposition.
They started harassing Joe. Eventually they locked him up. And then a wave of protest swept across Lesotho. Pop concerts were staged to pay for his legal expenses. Joe was a popular cause.
It went as far as the House of Lords, in Britain. (I think it went to the United Nations as well). Lesotho was independent but there was still some kind of vestigial judicial appeal system that went as high as the House of Lords. Their lordships found themselves discussing the unjust treatment of Joe Molefe, imprisoned without charge, a man with a bad back who was being forced to sleep on a prison bunk in Maseru.
The Lesotho government relented and agreed that Joe would be given a proper bed. This was brought to the jail. But the problem was that when they put the bed in his cell, they couldn't close the door. So Joe was allowed to sleep in a comfortable bed in an unlocked cell.
At which point even the Lesotho government realised the whole thing was damned silly and let him go.
Came the day when Joe and I were arrested in a remote part of Lesotho during yet another phase of turbulence and unrest. We were taken to Maseru for interrogation. But when we got there the higher-ups gulped when they saw it was Joe Molefe, and they let us both go. They didn't want another case in the House of Lords.
Came 1994 and Joe was able to leave Lesotho. The last I heard he'd been given some sort of diplomatic posting in North Africa. I never did see him again, but at least he was given some recognition. A man of great charm, intelligence and humour.
What now?
OVERHEARD in the Street Shelter for the Over-Forties: "I don't know what to do. I went to a Chinese restaurant last night and my fortune cookie contradicted my horoscope."
Tailpiece
A TRUCK carrying a consignment of Roget's Thesaurus overturned on the highway. Onlookers were stunned, overwhelmed, astonished, bewildered and dumbfounded.
Last word
It is by universal misunderstanding that all agree. For if, by ill luck, people understood each other, they would never agree.
Charles Baudelaire
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