It is therefore amazing that a mode of corporal punishment known to us all and exercised daily in our active social lives has come to be treated as though it were an apparition that has suddenly come to hog our space, disturb our peace and the even tenor of our, otherwise, blissful social lives. However, it only happens to be the use of the aggressive and thunderous sounding synonym, "flogging" that suggests offenders are being done a murderous bombardment. Flogging is not a term and concept in common usage to most of us, and usually is seldom heard if only through that English proverb that by and in itself invokes a wilful senselessness, insensitivity, violence and fatalism in all their communicative purposes of the normative, interpretive, and contrived expressiveness - "flogging a dead horse". Notice the sport being played at in the oxymoron served in the closed juxtaposition of meaning, sense, and portrayal! It would not have come out with much the same vigour and command intended if say it were, - "caning a dead horse" or "beating a dead horse". And that is exactly what is and was intended when they substituted the normally social and lawful happenstance of "caning" by the scary, insensitive, and violent sounding "flogging". Suddenly "thobola o kgwathe" has become so unnatural, so barbaric, so un-African, and so un-Setswana.
And yet all systems work together for the good of society. The only time when anyone needs to stop and shout, is against any flagrant flogging, -yes, a brutish, haphazard and indiscriminate flogging of people in that same violent and crude sense even against the basic precepts of the law. It is that which cannot be condoned and that which should not be tolerated because it will itself be an act of wanton lawlessness. The basic tenets of law are truth and justice. If one has broken the law, they are brought before lekgotla to explain themselves, - natural justice (I swear that...and nothing else but the truth, so help me God). Just as any law enforcer would caution -everyone must appear to say "ba re ke robile molao". It is then that after establishing the facts to either exonerate or incriminate one that judgement is delivered, be it a fine, caning, prison term and so on. Equity. And that my friends is our Setswana and African culture. Ga go epe ngwao e e ka galaletsang sepe se se kgatlhanong le tsamaiso e ya molao jaaka o tshwanetse wa dirahatswa.
