Ts’olo’s phuza face

The lesson from the Frazer Solar saga is that a country should never appoint empty heads to strategic positions.

Lesotho is being chased around the globe over a fictitious debt invited by Tšolo, a man who should never have been allowed anywhere near the cabinet.

We could have appointed a donkey to the cabinet because it doesn’t sign random contracts. A donkey would never write letters committing the government to dubious deals.

And even if it signs something with its hoof it would never come up with the same inane denials that Tšolo tried to sell us when confronted with a contract bearing his signature.

He said his signature was forged by the same man whose project he was touting in the cabinet and working overtime to secretly approve.

His other explanation is that he could not have signed the contract because he knows the procurement regulations.

Phew! He discovered those procurement regulations after negotiating with Frazer Solar and signing the contract on the government’s behalf. The other lesson from the scandal is that history repeats itself.

It reminds Muckraker of the time the white-man came to Africa, saw vast land he thought was unoccupied and seized it. They said they discovered Kome Caves and Malentsunyane Falls.

They thought they were coming into a country of primitive fools dressed in animal skins and fighting with spears.

That is what the Frazer Solar officials felt when they arrived in Maseru and met Tšolo. There he was, bumbling through Uncle Tom’s cabinet with a quart of Maluti hidden in his oversized jacket.

He would sip the beer from under the table and pretend to be paying attention.

The Frazer Solar officials instantly knew they had stumbled upon their village bumpkin (not pumpkin). He was exactly what they wanted. A man who could be pampered with beer and food until he sold his country.

After a few beers, Tšolo was saying: “Where do I sign? My hands are itching to sign something. Ha ke batle ho bora moreki!” He was saying this with his phuza face.

You could see from his letters to the company that he was now their man. Well pocketed. In one letter he almost shed tears as he explained how a contract that would transform lives in Lesotho had been delayed.

He was waxing lyrical about the project despite that the project had no feasibility study or financial projections. He doesn’t even know what an LED light is. He thinks solar power comes from ancestors.

This was just an excitable African swallowing nonsense fed to him by his handlers. They gave their slow African a contract and he signed. Period!

And they will never call him as a witness in their court cases because they know there is a vacuum between his ears. He might tell the court that he signed the contract after three bottles of Vodka.

“Me no sign konterake. Ke monna ea bitsoang Vodka”.

They know their African.

Nka! Ichuuuuuuuuuuu!

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