Talking Musika

RAMPHOLO MOLEFHE | Monday April 16, 2007 00:00

Some have approached these issues from the vantage of formal religion and the Christian scripture, many of them coming out of a church background. 

Others, like myself, are more intellectually persuaded by the atheistic angle on moral existence but will nevertheless, by this alternate route, arrive at the same moral positions as the men and women of scripture.

In other words, I do not believe that the church or scripture holds a monopoly over the human sense of right and wrong, and the duty of all human beings to do right in all their dealings with other humans.

In fact, the religions of the East, the Native Americans, the Basarwa and other indigenous populations of different lands probably have a relatively more credible record of upholding humanist morality than their brothers in the Christian faith.

But that is for others to judge.  Only a few days ago I heard my sons playing some song called 'Sister Bettina' or some such thing. I intermittently had reference to 'banyana ba dutse moo, ba butse dirope'.  I played possum, partly because I wanted to give the impression that I was listening, or even averse to the message that was coming though in the so-called song.

Many themes ran through my head, one of them being questions about my very role as a father, and even more questions about the other custodians of these young men.  How could they not, at their age, have missed the moral education that would tell them, even without parental intervention,that they were listening to rubbish that was also hurtful to their mothers and womankind in general?

I could not help recalling the statement once made by Bokwe Mafuna in the wisdom of an older person: ' when you address any woman as a 'bitch' think first about how your mother would feel if she were called that.'

This Sister Bettina thing is tantamount to using the 'bitch' word to describe our sisters, whose moral disposition is not always of the godly type, it must be admitted!
But you would think that the true artist would first recognise the problem for what it is, secondly to analyse it, and finally to suggest a remedy.  This will not necessarily be done all in one step.  And in any case, most sensitive scientists and artists will caution against at 'jumping to conclusions' or prescribing 'makgonatsotlhe' type solutions kana 'a remedy for all problems'.  Usually, those do not work. Having so said, the state press, which survives on the taxpayers' goodwill, should be the last place where the 'Sister Bettina' type messages should be made available or propagated.

We have no public broadcasters, but we shall not expect to hear Sister Bettina there when they are established.  We do not have community-based press, which we must have in order to propagate more positive messages of behavioural reform if we should find that our sisters are going astray, of course, with the generous help of the brothers.

If we should hear Bettina, it should most likely be through the 'private' radio stations that do not harbour any altruistic motives for broadcasting.  Profit is their main driving force. We expect to hear Bettina on the private radio stations precisely because, as I did in the car, we do not want to actively promote censorship except under the most extreme affront to social responsibility and public morality.

We must give the makers of Bettina the benefit of the doubt because they will argue that the woman represents a huge social problem. They will say that even though they took responsibility for the 'artistic' representation of Bettina, they were not responsible for making her, and that they are only reporting on what they see out there.

So we must be as committed to avoidance of censorship as we are to the principle of freedom of expression, both of which must stand if we must have a working democracy. The bitter pill to swallow: 'There would be no need for censorship at the age of the teenager if there had been proper moral training, parenting and learning much earlier'.