Should Artists Stand For Parliamentary Elections

Thulaganyo Jankey | Tuesday March 7, 2023 06:00

I mean there surely must be a law against people suggesting columns of this type. The major thing that I wanted to receive in the way of a blessing was that something horrible would happen to the fuel price increase gremlins.

But then, this week our parliament - instead of passing a law that would actually benefit ordinary Batswana, such as a mandatory death penalty for fuel increase personnel - decided to argue about an artist’s tagline ‘yoh’. Now ‘yoh’ was a little chant that the famous artist with dreadlocks uses in his songs as some sort of signature to spruce them up – and his songs need a lot of sprucing up most of the time. Before I get a lot of mail from his angry fans let me just say musically he sounds like an angry toad.

The MP, came up with the suggestion that future parliamentarians should not be in parliament merely because they can say ‘yoh’. There was a veiled implication that if the artist makes it to parliament and parliament is discussing the latest inflation figures his response will be something like ‘yoh’. When parliament is discussing the relationship between exam results and unqualified teachers his response would be ‘yoh’. When parliament is discussing the budget speech his response will be ‘yoh’.

Before I get a lot of mail from angry Healy fans, let me stress that there ARE no Healy fans. Artists though have very powerful organisations that speak for them.

If you talk ill of an artist, these organisations will arrange what is called a press conference and rebuke whoever has slighted the artist or release a statement to trash the offending party and ask that he be removed from his position whatever it is.

You could be a parking attendant and your earnings could be from people flipping coins at you and they would still ask you to resign your position if you so much as speak ill of an artist. They have taken this ‘an injury to one is an injury to all’ axiom to higher heights. So very soon this should happen and the MP would have to ward off a torrent of choice words from the organization.

Outside parliament there’s no protection from the speaker and he would have to plough a lonely furrow against eloquent unionists who are specialists in rhetoric and militant language. So the question should be: should artists stand for parliamentary elections? There’s a symbiotic relationship between politicians and artists. Usually when politicians are campaigning they need artists to bring the vibe to their campaigns and get the crowd sufficiently pumped up. I am sure the MP had something of this sort in mind.

If artists now want to stand for parliamentary elections who is going to sing at freedom squares. There’s a real danger that tone–deaf columnists who cannot even say ‘yoh’ could be roped in to provide the musical entertainment (which could well turn out to be musical torture) and this could seriously jeopardise people’s chances at the general elections.

So like the MP said he wants the artists to stay in their lane and keep the value chain alive. I tend to agree with the thought of keeping that value chain going because it includes a whole lot of groups amongst them promoters, DJs, sound engineers, dancers, slay queens, groupies, singers, muggers and pickpockets and so on and so forth.

The politician value chain is shorter and includes the choir and the MP and there’s very little room to squeeze in more people. I do not have a solution to this feud between the MP and the artist.

I am a columnist and my job is to have opinions. That is what most of us do. If you had your cat up a tree and you called me, instead of bringing the cat down I will give you a strongly-worded opinion – usually lifted off from Google and some unreliable friends and sources – about whether local cats should actually be climbing trees. That would not get any cat off a tree but then that is not my job. I forgot to put the following advisory at the beginning of the column: Do not read this column if you are an artist with political ambitions.

Now it is too late.

(For comments, feedback and insults email inkspills1969@gmail.com) Thulaganyo Jankey is a training consultant who runs his own training consultancy that provides training in BQA- accredited courses. His other services include registering consultancies with BQA and developing training courses. Contact him on 74447920 or email ultimaxtraining@gmail.com.