Follow the middle way

Legality is a hard term to define for the layman, and the very mention of it by the layman should be an affair handled with kid-gloves largely due to its sensitive nature; for where the layman sees a surely favourable decision by the courts, a simple technicality arises that douses the passionate fires of uneducated layperson speculations that often fallaciously foresee a victory in court even before the trial is a quarter way through the motions.
The understanding of any phenomenon seeks first for one to understand its basic purpose, and Roscoe Pound states, the simplest purpose of law is there in order to keep the peace in a given society; to keep the peace at all events and at any price: to satisfy the general social want of security.

This general want for security is expressed in the concept of status quo, which stipulates that the law is a device that keeps each man in his appointed groove in society to avoid such a man conflicting or being in friction with his fellows.
Judgement should therefore not be the task of those that are not ‘learned’, for by simply venturing out into the territory of those exalted ones with wigs and gavels, the unlearned are not only stepping out of their set groove in society, but are also endangering the lives of the rest of society with their uneducated speculations which may sow seeds of discord and chaos.

As events unfold in society, there are bound to be critics and speculators who have opinions on the unfolding events; but the clear understanding should be that opinions are not facts, in fact, opinions are not even ideas unless they can be backed by strong evidence and logical argument: opinions are in reality the shouting of a lost or searching man in the middle of the storm, and the owner thereof often does not have the vaguest idea of what it is they are talking about.

They can be compared to the babbling of a new-born infant, who in their garble cannot be understood until such a time that they have mastered the art of imitating the speech of those that are considered competent enough in speech to communicate.
The unlearned “gurus of social media” often sound uncouth in their declarations that have droves of gullible followers showering them with ‘likes’ and ‘shares’; at the detriment of the nation as an entity that should respect the rights of all.

We the unlearned do not know how to disseminate information safely enough not to endanger the basic security of the land, therefore: we the unlearned should learn to keep quiet when it is not our place to disperse or to distribute sensitive information.
Do understand the grace granted by an atmosphere that is without the sound of guns, for when the land and its hills begin to echo the sound of gunshots and booming cannons, the blabbermouth will wish they had bit their tongue before cackling like a gossip on platforms about information they should have reserved for the relevant authorities to disseminate.

One hears of the term ‘expert opinion’, but one is also disappointed when they look at the educational background of those said experts (dubious the CV is always oftentimes).
Lacking in proper education, the speculative nature of the views aired reveals that we are a country that has not bothered to explore the fullness of anything, that is, we tend to be satisfied with less than 10 percent because somehow, the 90 percent can always be imagined into existence even if it is not there.
In this country, an individual sees a snippet of anything and reveals it to the crowd as a full piece, and those that get to see this dubious final piece are often not smart enough to see the cracks the poorly made piece of news is full of just below the surface.
Like truly colonised natives, many a citizen still boast about being the ‘first’ to either see or reveal news. The question is: do you ever question the veracity of the piece you just distribute to the masses?

Being snide is not gracious, being malicious is plain heinous, the sad reality is that the so-called ‘social media’ is or has always been a festering dung heap posing as a platform to air nonsense by unthinking nonentities, who often pose as Sherlock Holmes’ in suspenders and mascara.
Forgiveness never went wrong, and when the air is reeking of the electric sparks of vindictiveness, one and one and one and the rest should be scared; for evil begets evil, and revenge begets vengeance: and the cycle goes on and on in an unending continuum.

Listen to the voices of the heard, and what is easy to pick up is the verbosity of hypocrites that pretend to be saying something different when they are in every essence repeating the same chants of war we have heard since Africa begot of her independence.
Of the way forward, one hears nothing, of, “I want to convict the next candidate our history proves as guilty . . . ” one hears varied chorals of vindictive experts on everything.

The reality is that no one is infallible; the reality is that there is no Messiah out here in these boondocks, and there is none that reserves the right to wear the cloak of righteousness.  What should be righted are the fading relations between man and man, man and woman and child.
Of the clean white sheep the bleating thereof I do not want to listen to, for the reality is that the history of this here land has made us all black sheep that have killed other men for vested interests.

Mandela was not playing the part of a fool when he sought a way to forgive despite or inspite of what might have been done in the past: the reality of life is that the past can never be undone.
Judges who judge must look to Rwanda if they seek to understand what moving forward really means.
Being right and self-righteousness are two different things; for the former needs no confirmation while the latter always begs to be heard or to be confirmed.
The upright individual stands as Morena Mohlomi does in the impartation of the sacred knowledge on how to rule a land to Lepoqo who later on becomes Moshoeshoe oa Pele.  Being right when it comes to the judgement of anyone means understanding the simple fact that there will be errors in human judgement, and to leave room for the possible occurrence or commitment of such errors by other individuals other than yourself who may do so wittingly or unwittingly.

Adopting the self-righteous attitude of one who acts as if they have in their lifetimes committed no wrong or offended anyone in any way however miniscule or profound is as hypocritical as the devil playing the role of a saint; for all of us living are at some point in time bound to hurt someone in some way.

Being right often means standing in the next individual’s shoes and earnestly imagining or diligently seeking a clear understanding of the circumstances that might have led to their committing that which they now have to stand on trial for.
Thomas Henry Huxley makes reference to how the cosmos can teach us how to understand how the good and evil came about, but also how the cosmos fails to tell us which one is preferable between good and evil.
The truth is that when it comes to choosing what is right and wrong, either one of the two can seem the better option dependent on the prevailing circumstances.

Killing another is bad, but euthanasia however defended it may be is similar in nature; for it is a relative of the former, that is, it still is killing another: only the reason and the justification for the commitment of either differ.
Being wrong and punishment often follow each other in sequence, but in the case where the wrong has not been proven yet, punishment should be suspended until the wrong has been fully proven by the relevant authorities.

Where the relevant authority is silenced by a cacophony of voices that claim to have the ‘right’ even though the amount of responsibility on their shoulders is miniscule, then punishment is bound to abound and those that impart it are bound to face the full wrath of karma (of the sort that is guided by the argument, “what goes around . . . comes around”).

Just because the majority stands behind a decision does not entail that the decision is right, for the reality is that, where there are many working on one issue, the errors too tend to be many.
One finds the current scenario in the country as directly influenced by the belief that the many can be right all the time, while the truth as it is being revealed may prove facts to the contrary.

I am yet to see an ordinary bus with two steering wheels and two drivers or many steering wheels turned by many drivers. For birds to fly in perfect formation, there is always the lead bird at the fore-tip of the vee leading them on to their nest or to the pasture where they graze.
I guess the modern man is wrong to think that he can rule as a team without a team leader, or as a group that claims to be a coalition that has one member growing in influence ignorant of the needs of the other members in it.
What is right means understanding that all are different in some way, and it means also acknowledging the fact that the difference does not mean we cannot all work together towards a common goal.

Being right necessitates the need to refer to living or proven solutions that have worked in the past to sort out problems in the present. Those problems that need immediate or long term attention should be classified as such, and what is not clearly understood must be clarified.
There is in essence no difference between people and their professions, the difference is often only determined by ego; that faculty of the human mind that influences individuals or groups to think they are better or less than others on the status quo.

The colonised African of the modern times is conned by the view that they can be the ‘first’ to do, to follow, to see, or to pave a way.
The truth is that there is nothing new when it comes to human relationships; all the rules have been written in the holy books of the monks, and in those books of statutes.

What one finds is a world where people still chant freedom slogans even though more than a half century has passed since their liberation.
Our minds are stuck in the past, and the past is pulling us back into regression, the continent withers in the face of current problems like economic recession and global warming, and all is fading as we chant songs of enslaving ‘freedom’.

Soon the continent will be lost, whilst we will still be busy with the composition of ‘who is right who was right’ slogans.
Those fortunate ones knew when to forgive and to forget the past, those humble ones knew that all of us are fallible and are therefore all worthy of grace. Those wise kings and mystics of old knew that the only way to pave a new path is to leave the old road and to get to work together in the carving of a new era.

Rwanda was scarred in 1994, Japan was hit by a catastrophe just a few years ago; both are on levels this tiny kingdom might never get to reach.
There is a middle way the state should follow, and it stems from the history of the king that begot this land, it stems from the realisation that revenge never ends and should therefore be left where it lies.  The middle way acknowledges that all are human. All . . .

Tsepiso S Mothibi