Women are builders of society

In any nation, women play a pivotal role in building society. Women are taken as pillars of strength and play a strategic role in working the mechanics of building a healthy nation. In Sesotho we all know the famous word that say – Mosali o ts’oara thipa ka bohaleng. Women are always at the helm of tough matters of life. However, once the reverse happens and women become dysfunctional in society, it then results in a nation that suffers from moral decay. For example, this is what we see in the modern-day Basotho nation. Once women become drunkards, corrupt and vulgar, you should know that the nation is finished. It’s curtains! It’s like having a nation where the police service is made up of corrupt criminals. Does this resonate with a country you know located somewhere in the belly of South Africa? As by the way, my wife is starting to complain that these opinion pieces that I write on a weekly basis, take up too much of my time and I’ve to focus on work. She told me that Christmas is around the corner and I’ve to focus on getting some Christmas clothes and toys for the kids. As a result, I’ve made an undertaking to take a break from writing in order to prepare to close the office for the festive season. So, if you don’t see me next week, you know whom to blame. This time of the year is by far the most stressful of all times. There’s just so much pressure from all angles. People want to get paid even though they have delivered nothing during the year. On the other hand, kids are expecting Christmas clothes and toys and it’s non-negotiable. I always wonder how our unemployed parents cope under the current circumstances of nothingness. How do their kids cope with having nothing on Christmas day? It’s heart-breaking stuff. That is why it is important to stop voting for this useless crop of politicians that can’t even count up to ten to save their lives. I mean all we hear is talk, talk, talk and not a single job on the ground. If they are not talking, they are busy crafting the latest strategic plan. How many strategic plans do they need for them to realise that their entities are irrelevant? A strategic plan of a strategic plan in the year 2020? Aoe banna! Aoe shapo! It’s not only unemployment that we have to deal with but there is something I’ve observed that is even more concerning and it has to do with the behaviour of our young modern-day Basotho women. The young and emancipated ones. Ka nnete, the things we see from our Basotho women nowadays are not only disturbing but deeply concerning. There is a trend nowadays of women that have gained their independence from the so-called stereotypes. Most of them are single parents, a very few by choice but mostly due to divorce. So these women are heavy drinkers, they are vulgar, rude and bad drivers to top it up. Ke mataoa (they are drunkards) to put it mildly! There’s simply no way a country can build a healthy nation with dysfunctional women at the helm of society. The question is, what kind of mothers are these women becoming or will become? I mean, what kind of mothers drink in front of their children or arrive home at 4am from a party? This is the kind of moral decay I wanted to touch on this week because it will end up affecting the character and make-up of the entire nation. I’m a relatively young person but I witnessed how some of our Basotho women held the family structure intact when the fathers were somewhere in the South African mines. These women would keep a very strong façade and make things happen and sometimes under very difficult conditions. The fathers would come home from Welkom or Carletonville mines, either on month-end and in some extreme cases, during major holidays only. But during the course of the year, the women had to play a double role of being mothers and fathers. In my opinion, that’s where the rot started to happen. This is how the Basotho family structure got destroyed and the damage was ignored and not dealt with. The result of not having father figures led to bitter men that have no foundation in running a family. If you look closely, most Basotho men are very dysfunctional and angry people. Take a closer look at some of our politicians and observe why they are the way they are. There goes your answer! Most of our Basotho families had to make do with absent fathers and this distorted the way a family was designed to function. The result was a make-up of families that had no structure, no value system, no principles and no aspirations. This reminds me of an important point I’ve always wanted to raise. In the early 80’s, a gentleman named Bill Cosby had a dream to change perceptions about the make-up of an African-American family structure. The dream was to create a television show that would promote family values and be a model of how the modern day African-American family should look like. The show was named the Cosby show and modelled around a doctor named Dr Huxstable and his wife named Clair. In the show, Clair was a lawyer by profession and she was instrumental in instilling family values and discipline. When the show was introduced in 1984 it became an instant hit. Not only in America but globally. I remember how I used to watch it and just loved it. That was mainly because of the influence of my friend’s father Ntate S.J. Thabisi. Ntate Thabisi was a family man who valued time with the family. He would encourage us to watch the Cosby show in an attempt to have something to aspire to. A model family to aspire to and this was exactly what Bill Cosby wanted to achieve with the show. Before the Cosby show was introduced, the African-American family structure was typically a dysfunctional one. Fathers arrived at any time of the night and sometimes they would not arrive home at all. The mothers were rude and mostly high on drugs or intoxication from alcohol. This was how a typical Black American family looked like. But Bill Cosby said, hang on a minute, let’s show the other side of a Black-American family. A family made up of professionals and a family that sits around the dinner table to have a family meal. Families where kids attend private schools and attain good grades. Families where there’s discipline and most importantly a sense of love. Love! This is what lacks in our families and society here in Lesotho. So, Bill Cosby was successful in changing perceptions. Quickly, people wanted to aspire to have a family that looked like the Huxtables as they were affectionately known. The success of the Cosby Show even inspired a South African version of the Huxtables named the Moroka Family sometime in 1994, when South Africa got its freedom from the apartheid system. The dream to craft an idea of the Moroka family came after a gentleman named Mfundi Vundla realised how the Apartheid system ravaged the structure of Black South African families. I mean, as much as I admire and work with the Afrikaaner community, the damage they have caused on the family structure of the Black South Africans is unimaginable. In some cases, the damage is irreversible. The Afrikaaner community owes Black South Africans a lot. Apartheid was a monster. It was a monster that didn’t want to see black people advance and most of all, it was a system that hated the black family structure. As a result, Black families were either misplaced in an attempt to seek better opportunities in some parts of the country and sometimes in a quest to run away from the oppressive system. This then resulted in families that were nothing but dysfunctional. This is where Mfundi Vundla came in with a show named Generations. The show was meant to change perceptions about how a modern day South African family should look like. The show was a hit. It was modelled around a family named the Moroka Family that owned an advertising agency. I mean, it was a breath of fresh air. A family that owned an advertising agency in South Africa? That was unheard of. South African families were known to own spaza-shops and taxis. But Mfundi Vundla succeeded. He managed to change perceptions and created something people could aspire for and this is what we need in Lesotho. Our women need guidance to become good and strong mothers. They need to be the glue that holds society intact eseng mataoa (not drunkards). In conclusion, I must admit that a lot of Basotho women are the way they are, because the way Basotho men are. Basotho men lack a proper foundation. They lack morals, they lack principles and are generally a very ill-disciplined people. Look at the behaviour of our 4+1 drivers. I mean, what kind of fathers are they? What are they teaching their kids? What kind of husbands are they? This then results in very stubborn and angry women. Lesotho has very deep social problems. If we don’t turn the tide soon enough, and change the trajectory with our women, this nation will be finished. As it is, its already finished. ‘Mako Bohloa