When the soot got into the rat’s eye Botswana President Ian Khama (left) shakes hands with his United States counterpart Barack Obama in this file picture. The two are currently not seeing eye-to-eye
Botswana President Ian Khama (left) shakes hands with his United States counterpart Barack Obama in this file picture. The two are currently not seeing eye-to-eye

Botswana President Ian Khama (left) shakes hands with his United States counterpart Barack Obama in this file picture. The two are currently not seeing eye-to-eye

MY TURN with TICHAONA ZINDOGA

Not that Botswana is a saint, though, as reports of repression and Khama’s heavy- handedness are in a flux right now, which may be making his government to panic, under pressure. Botswana need not panic, though, because America has worse friends, among them dictators, tyrants and monarchs.

Yesterday I rushed to finish off a play called “The Respectful Prostitute (La Putian Respecteuse)”, which I abandoned midway some months back.

The play is by Jean-Paul Sartre, a widely respected French man of letters.
He is described in one biography as an existentialist philosopher and pioneer, dramatist and screenwriter, novelist and critic who was a leading figure in 20th century French philosophy.

He is also notable for refusing to accept the 1964 Nobel Prize in Literature “for his work which, rich in ideas and filled with the spirit of freedom and the quest for truth, has exerted a far-reaching influence on our age”.

His reasons, as he said in a statement made to the Swedish Press on October 22, were “neither the Swedish Academy nor the Nobel Prize in itself . . . (but) personal and objective” ranging from having not been consulted and having a principle of not accepting such honours from the West nor East to questioning how the prize had been abused politically.

He thus argued: “I know that the Nobel Prize in itself is not a literary prize of the Western bloc, but it is what is made of it, and events may occur which are outside the province of the members of the Swedish Academy. This is why, in the present situation, the Nobel Prize stands objectively as a distinction reserved for the writers of the West or the rebels of the East.”

Sartre was not ambivalent and stated his support for communism and communist leaning people from Venezuela to Algeria.
Which brings us to another point, the last, by way of explaining the man behind “La Putian Respecteuse”.

Sartre wrote the preface to the seminal book by Frantz Fanon, “The Wretched of the Earth” (which I hope to go back to after shelving it prematurely not less than four years ago).

Sartre tells us that the “Third World finds itself and speaks to itself” through Fanon’s great work and of course doesn’t hide his own disdain for the West.

Including that “super-European monstrosity, North America”, which goes, “Chatter, chatter: liberty, equality, fraternity, love, honour, patriotism and what have you. All this did not prevent us from making anti-racial speeches about dirty niggers, dirty Jews and dirty Arabs.”

Interestingly, in “The Respectful Prostitute”, Sartre lays into American hypocrisy as the story concerns a drunken white gang coming from winning a football match who board a train.

The white men “smell a nigger”, referring to two blacks aboard the same train, who they want to throw out of the window.
Their attempt to do so results in a scuffle in which one of the white men, sensing defeat, pulls a gun and kills one nigger and the other one jumps to safety at the station.

Only he is subsequently hunted down on framed charges of having raped a white lady (who also happens to be a prostitute) and cut a white gentleman with a razor.

The white men seek to defeat justice and lynch the innocent nigger, who is hidden by the prostitute.
These self-important white men include The Senator who asks Lizzie, the prostitute, whether she is a communist. She is not.

The Senator: Then Uncle Sam would have many things to tell you. He would say, “Lizzie, you have reached a point where you must choose between two of my boys. One of them must go. What can you do in a case like this? Well you keep the better man . . . Lizzie this Negro whom you are protecting, what good is he? . . . Nothing at all; he dawdles, he chisels, he sings, he buys pink and green suits . . .

That other one is Thomas who has killed a Negro, and that’s very bad. But I need him. He is one hundred percent America, comes from one of our oldest families, has studied at Harvard, is an officer . . . His duty is to live and yours is to preserve his life. That’s all. Now, choose.”

So the prostitute is forced to sign a declaration incriminating the nigger, for a fee she doesn’t receive fully, and white justice sets out to hunt the nigger.

They don’t find him but lynch a wrong man all the same.
So much about liberty, equality, fraternity, love, honour, patriotism!

While it is a well-established and historical fact that America is a hypocritical nation – or mainly so its leaders – we were rather surprised that this one truth is even known in neighbouring Botswana!

Jeff Ramsay, the Botswana government spokesperson, miffed by comments made by the US with respect to a Tswana journalist, had to remind America of its own duplicity.

He said, “… as a nation under the rule of law the government of Botswana does not detain anyone indefinitely, much less hold them in occupied portions of third countries in violation of international law, e.g. Guantanamo.”

Ramsey went on to thumb his nose at America’s alleged concern for journalists in foreign countries while a journalist was assaulted and detained without charge while covering unrest following the shooting of Michael Brown.

Michael Brown, a black teenager, was shot and killed by white officers; an all too common occurrence in America, as in “The Respectful Prostitute’s” America.

So Ramsey could have added the race factor, too, of present-day lynching of blacks.
It makes America unfree and liberty-less to many; fratricidal, loveless and without honour.

That is at home.
Abroad the situation is the same.

America is selfish, tries to defeat and reverse people’s freedoms and sovereignty; steals their oil and acts in a manner that is generally disagreeable and dishonourable.

Only she does not seem to realise it, being wont to feel good about it, to be the only superpower.
The title of this piece alludes to Rat and Soot fighting.

It derives from local, rustic wisdom.
Our grass-thatched huts in the rural areas gather a lot of soot, or chin’ai, from the fires that make our food.

The soot gathers over time, and it is said it is actually a good thing when a marriage lasts to see enough chin’ai.
The soot acts as both a camouflage and playground for rats which burrow deep inside the thatch.

So, Soot and Rat often go along well.
Curious is the day they disagree; fight.

And when friends or bosom buddies fight, it is often remarked that Rat and Soot are at each other’s throats!
See Botswana and the US are friends, and from some Zimbabwean perspective, in alliance against Zimbabwe.

This is why Zimbabwe’s relationship with its neighbour is not very warm.
Botswana President Ian Khama has not tried to endear himself to Zimbabwe, as other leaders in the region do and often takes potshots at the neighbour in what can be seen as attempts to keep his other relationship warm enough.

Khama was born to a British mother and appears to have taken the diplomatic relationship between Zimbabwe and US so personally.
Botswana has been accused of holding transmitters for an American-sponsored pirate radio station beaming regime change messages into Zimbabwe.

More chillingly, it is said Botswana once asked the United States to give it weapons such as global positioning systems, anti-tank missiles, short-range air defence systems, F5 under-wing tank system and helicopter gunships for a war with Zimbabwe.

The US prudently declined, fearing an arms race and instability in the region.
When a country like Botswana then goes to the extent of attacking its friend in the manner that Ramsey did, it can only be a spectacle.
Not that Botswana is a saint, though, as reports of repression and Khama’s heavy handedness are in a flux right now, which may be making his government to panic, under pressure.

Botswana need not panic, though, because America has worse friends, among them dictators, tyrants and monarchs.

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