Thaaka! It's Kenneth Koma's "Mene-mene tekel upharsin!"

KEINEETSE KEINEETSE | Friday July 2, 2010 00:00

Koma always maintained that the BDP was held together by Go Ja meaning that they were welded together by corruption and their love of ostentation, and that party's leadership propensity to covert state funds for private ends. Koma maintained that in time ruthless and rapacious competition would erupt leading to the fracturing of that party. Would he now, have conceded that his diagnosis was not only spot on but that the developments also advanced the balance of political forces?  Most of his life Koma predicted the eminent end of the neo-colonialist leadership in Botswana. He believed that Botswana, just like every country everywhere else on earth, was subject to immutable historical laws of development, dialectic which would sooner or later catch up with her, 'There comes a moment in the life of every nation, when people re-think the thoughts they have always believed, and when that moment comes nations make a turn, breaking completely with the past', was his favourite expression.

Koma's life's work was a devotion to the complete transformation of what he called feudalist Bechuana (Botswana) into a modern democracy of equal citizens whose economy would be characterised by equitable distribution of wealth.  Most of his ideas were not just sneered at by the ruling elite, but rejected as out-rightly unworkable. He never despaired though, but acknowledged that the BDP borrowed some of his thoughts, albeit, with studied corruption of their core tenets. Would he say today that he has been vindicated in every way and that it is now 'Mene mene tekel upharsin'? Or that the writing is on the wall, signalling the BDP endgame? Or would he say that what is happening is merely the elaboration of the dialectic and a vindication of the old saying that 'everything carries the seeds of its own destruction'. In considering this I am particularly reminded of that great son of our country, in life vilified and condemned for eating Kabu or putting Magwinya in his pocket, wearing shoes without sock et cetera, ad infinitum. As if those bourgeoisie values were all that mattered to the lives of thousands of our people living under poverty datum line.  I am reminded of the stature of that  personality larger than life; a first grade writer, a seasoned rhetorician and politician, a great orator and teacher and a fine dialectician, Dr Koma, a man whose later life disagreements, seems to have blemished his fame. Many years ago in his heyday, Koma said the second phase of the African Revolution had begun. He was making a review of Africa's tortured march from slavery, right through capitalist exploitation of basic commodity production to nationalist agitation and armed conflict following the second world war, to the most hallowed declarations of freedom. Koma was not satisfied with what he called the independence of hoisting a flag and the singing of national anthems. He believed that independence should not only be political but economic and cultural as well. He was suspicious of the illusive Uhuru that led to repressive states of 'equitable distribution of poverty' in most of post independence Africa. 

Koma was taking issue with the commentary of another African visionary Frantz Fanon who had poured scorn on some of the methods used by the so-called liberation forces to mobilise the African masses.

Koma was always  optimistic and even as his party was suffering one after another election defeat he would cheer his comrades up by saying; 'Thaaka! Re santse re taa ba tsena mangotu, hee la la bofelo re taa ba thoisa batho!', we will propagate our ideas everywhere and by every means, and turn the people against them, as the people experience daily abuses and other failures of capitalism, the rich and powerful will not be able flaunt their ill-begotten wealth before the hungry crowds, or use their money to buy the thighs of innocent children. Adding, as my Mokgatla comrade Knox would say, ' ba taa ja  sengwe botlhoko!' We shall pressurise them from all sides, from below and from above, as everywhere they go, it shall be our ideas of social organisation, our ideas of social production and equitable distribution, that will gain ascendance. Labour shall continue to demand its fair share of profit social production, improved living and working conditions, failing which angry workers would come out into the streets, in demonstrations. Our ideas will become so popular that large sections of the population shall embrace them, the neo-colonial ruling regime itself will in time, be forced to posture with our ideas. We shall have established a total field of hegemony. The ruling elite shall corrupt such ideas of course, because in the first place they don't even believe in social justice.  Thaaka! Ke mathalerwa hela batho ba, ha aja kgomo. They will eat each other if they are starved enough. 'But you must not forget, in any interest group there are patriots, who will be ashamed to hold down their own motherland for foreign rape.  There will also be those that will prevaricate until the eleventh hour, of the National democratic Revolution. But for more and more people, as the oppositions and contradictions sharpen and mover to a higher stage, and the larger dialectic unfolds, they will not want to be caught on the wrong side of the social divide. They will sooner, like a political mud slide, move over to the people' side, swelling as it were opposition ranks, and  we must be ready for this moment. There will be a great flux of people and ideas, there will be increased contestation of ideas in order to take the quantum leap.' Now these many years later these very words seem to beg our pardon. Koma talked of accommodation in more than one senses, first as strategy to avoid senseless and counterproductive violence in the process of change. Secondly as practical recognition that social movement   just like history does not move  like light in straight lines. Often it is one step back for two forward.

Anything that we are aware of at a given moment forms part of our consciousness, experience at once the most familiar and most mysterious aspects of our lives, Koma seemed to agree with his philosophical predecessor Hegel

Parties are voluntary organisations to which there is no restriction on membership, koma maintained. 'Tomorrow when the winds of change come stirring  a whole Tsunami from within the bowls of the BDP,  forcing others to flee that party and seek refuge within the ranks of opposition parties,  you will not turn them away'. Koma would say.

He would go as far as stating  that if it came to him to do so,  he would choose for ministers and senior government  officials, not only from his party, but  even people from the civil service. These were comments that fell on ears hard of hearing especially from the youth who saw themselves as the logical  beneficiary of the current struggles. Koma was not, by these comments making or indicating a preference for either people in the BDP or a bent for those in the civil service, he was merely stating the nature of the  organisation he was trying to build, one which like his proverbial Morwelela, big river, would  grow by being  swelled and enjoined by smaller tributaries.

Koma like Hegel before him, believed in dialectics of chance, that you start with a proposition, a thesis, work it through its opposite, the anti-thesis, contest the two until a third position, the synthesis was reached. He believed behind all was a  presence, a force, a 'world spirit' that was behind all change and  that was unstoppable. Everything changes, everything is in a state of flux, and change is the only constant. Koma would elaborate in private, though he never went round to warn his lieutenants, to expect a dialectic of change to even occur to the very party they were in the train of building.  Now so many years later, the truths or many different shades  of what he used to say, seems like his biblical quotation, to have gone Mene, mene, tekel upharsin.

Koma was cultivating in these examples above, a culture of tolerance and accommodation that seems entirely lacking in our political  formations today. Such accommodation as alluded to above, is absolutely necessary as it is supposed to bring with it transformative energy and urgency. It is at this moment of hybridisation of programmes that superficial differences will abate while common tendencies cohere. 'Even in your public rally campaigns, you must not insult MaDomkrag,' Koma would say.  'Because today's BDP members are tomorrow's BNF members'. 'Thaaka! Ke raya gore maDomkrag a gompieno ke bone Maforanta a ka moso, hee!' 'Thaaka! Ha re tsaya puso re ya go busa ka  bone. Ga ba  bolawe, ba rutwa, ba a tlhabololwa  sesha,  ke batho, o tlaa dirang ka bone? Botoka re ba tsenya mo toronkong hela  e tona, ya semoya. We shall re-educate them, for they are people, what else can you do expect to put them in individual spiritual prisons where they will be haunted by conscience but  left to their own surveillance'.  His politics was therefore both transformative and rehabilitative.

And this he was saying after his party welcomed within its ranks the former Gaborone Town Mayor and tycoon, Peter Wellie Matheadira Seboni who had emerged from a bruising murder case.

The elderly seer of  Ditlharapa! Koma like the Frankfurt school of socialists, Theodore Adorno and Walter Benjamin, believed in a transformative but democratic form of socialism, and not one based on the exercise of extreme social force as represented by the police, the army and the prisons. It was this weakness, this aversion to blood letting, a quality of his that the like of Daniel Kwelagobe exploited no end. The word 'Revolution' that is pervasive in Dr Koma Phamplet No 1 was bandied by Koma's detractors as though is were a double edged axe.

Embedded-ness of social institutionsParty to the people first before u can expect the people to the party!

Koma had a concept that his party members should identify with the daily struggles of the ordinary people, that way, he maintained, the people will see the party as coming, emerging as it were from their mist. He cautioned in the political agitation and altercation for people to exercise great restraint, even in the face of arrogant provocation of the members of the ruling party. Advising avoidance of conflict, that for humanly possible, members should desist from any acts political intolerance or insolence. Urging that whenever bad behaviour, people hurling insults, was displayed in public it should be identified with his distracters rather than his followers.

Criticise them but do not insult them he would urge his followers. Explaining that such behaviour was primitive and should be left with the uneducated followers of the ruling party. But when the youth went out I Koma was a pacifist who disdained blood shed. Ever so careful not to inflame the restless youth impatient with the rate of political change  and given to tough talk. Koma was largely disdainful of all tendencies to dangerous political adventurism ya bo re taa ya sekgweng popular tough talk of those days threatening bush war. When such threats would be uttered in his presence he would respond scornfully that the talker was incapable of any such acts because of the love for creature comforts and women. He would dismiss the hasty comrade as mistaking armed struggle for picnics. Koma would argue that those threatening were cowardly bourgeoisie who could not survive two days away from the comforts offered by urban life. 'Some of you can no longer sleep on the ground ka phate hela ya letalo la podi. Motho wa lona ha a ile gae, hela kwa go mmaagwe, o feta apalelwa ke go tshela, ha  Mme a mo alela  phate hela ya podi, motho wa teng  o lala a lela bosigo botlhe. Yet such people are prepared to keep the rest of our people in such poor conditions eternally.    

But before we reach a confluence of forces there will be great movement of people, whole families will break apart, wife will desert her husband party, the children and the innocent will find their own place in the new alignment of forces. Phuduga hela e kgolo. Jaanong ka nako eo,hee, Phutusa, Thaaka! Phutusa hela e tona, ya sepolotiki e tla bo e sala edule hela, e le mokoa jaana. Ba ba buang bao, ba re ditonki di tla mela dinaka, ga baa sojwa,  rae ke boRampatshetlha hela,  ba basa itseng, sepe. 'Motho wa bo Semangmang', sometimes calling the name of some very senior ruling party official, 'that so and so' and then he would issue his classic exclaimer, 'Thaaka!  Ga ana leha e le kutusiso! Ke raya,  ga a tshware ka thogo!' Koma was singularly placed to know, had surpassed most of his peers by far, in education. He was already studying for higher degrees when his peers who were to become ministers were learning their first lessons at waltz and foxtrot and how to cook scorns by the departing colonials in Bontleng and white City.  By this time he already commandeered some half dozen university degrees including one, a mysteriously curious subject called 'All African Problems'. He understood more than anything else the callousness of colonialism having completed a doctoral dissertation on 'The crisis of the Congo' where a patriot and a comrade Patrice Lumumba had been murdered by forces of counter-revolution sponsored by  the west with an active connivance of the UN.

Ngwana wa koma o rutwa koma ka molodi!  Kenneth Koma the creator of imagesBut then the humorous literary Koma, something of a mixture of Dostoevsky and Leo Tolstoy, who in his usual shy but mischievous style would laugh off at the pretentiousness of society. The words we use to hide behind language.  before he launched on a series of allegorical treatises, first it would be his pet subject, the allegory of the cave, by which he argued that the national leadership had continued the bondage of both the traditional feudal and the modern colonial capitalist exploitation that was facilitated by keeping people in ignorance.  that if you would take a group of people from their infancy and confine them in a dark cave without any possibility of light, keep them there long enough while brain washing them to believe there was no reality, other than the captivity in which they were kept, they would soon grow to believe the lies they were fed on and even become distrustful of light itself.

Nnyo tshetlha e tsala e e runneng! Excuse the coarseness of language, there is a goldmine of wisdom contained in this unseemly idiom. Koma believed philosophically in calling things by their proper names. He argued that Setswana culture, of which he was quite a fundi, was crossly conservative and tended to exclude many things from language. One of the traditional politesse with which he strongly objected was the appellation 'Mong wame' by which subjected people addressed their lords and masters. He would argue like Hegel that it was the serf who made the master, whose production satisfied the needs of the lord and master and that when the serf would withdraw his services the master would learn painfully how to fend for himself. By that act alone, he argued, the serf would have liberated both himself and his captive, the master. One of the reasons Koma was received suspiciously by rural folks was his argument that his government would free Basarwa serfs, working at masimo and cattle-post by making education not only free but also compulsory for their children.But Koma was a careful chooser of register. It was him,  Dr Koma, who in between a very erudite presentation of education as a strategy for national emancipation and  social distribution, that  hit on a note that stunned the entire congregation. Nnyo tshetlha e tsala e e runneng!

Koma believed ignorance, poverty and joblessness were not incidental to Botswana or the developing world, but were conscious investments of the exploitative system to further propagate itself. But held that that way it was possible to abuse workers and that this would in time radicalise the work force leading to a clash  between employers and unionised labour. The asserted that in the end labour would triumph.

Koma questioned the very notion of social development, that emphasized infrastructural development over human capital and  development, arguing that 'we ought to start with the human being who will in turn with cultivated talent develop his environment'. Koma maintained  that humans beings and not things are priority. He questioned the very premises of development as envisaged by the succeeding BDP governments. The BDP's propensity for sky rise buildings that excluded all locally available building materials. He always had a query to raise in parliament with every succeeding developmental project, usually a tall building or a mine, what part, he would demand to know,  of the budget would be taken up as wages and the cost of keeping jobs. Mostly he was dismissive of projects of ostentation whose only value, he claimed was to validate government's claims to the exercise of power. He was certainly ahead of his time.

Koma was at his best reacting to the establishment of what he then called a 'state company' Leno, a company owned by leading figures in the BDP. Koma maintained that there was a need to separate the party of state  from the state and national  business, and that any mixing would lead to a dangerous fall-out between the members of the ruling elite either fighting for shares or for seats in boards of directors.  Now with hind sight, can we really say his predictions were off the mark? 

Dr Koma often talked of a balance of forces, sometimes as if it were a moment, a moment away, and at other times, he talked of it as if it was a time so distant, it was beyond reach. At one such time he once said he was afraid of the prevailing lack of seriousness in the development of  BNF cadres, the nation  would be bye-passed by the revolutionary moment, without anybody seeing it. He said while the dialectics obeyed only the laws of nature, it was for the human beings to read the writings on the wall. Now with new political parties springing into being one is at a loss whether or not we have not reached a balance of forces, a moment that should precede change. Surely the Hegelian Dialectics is upon us!

Nako ya Phuduga - Ntlo e a sha!As indicated Koma long foresaw the BDP End game. He said in the period leading to the total collapse  escalating corruption and self service,  as the ruling elite loot and  fight over the spoils of power.  He also predicted that the seemingly senseless conflict would cut across the entire social fabric leading to irreparable break up of family units along party lines where every individual will have to make new political re-alignments. When that time comes, he had  added laughing naughtily and  allegorically that 'Go taa tswa Phutusa hela e e phatshimang' ' mme e sena mong wa yone'. Obviously making reference to the story of the same subject that kept Botswana Parliament in stitches of laughter some years ago.

And who were his lieutenants? Koma was even amidst company, a lonely man. Apart from a short marriage Koma was a bachelor for most of his life. He was first and fore most an organic self effacing intellectual, who lived his life in the public view, but asked little attention from those around him. He was also a generous man who gave generously for the causes he believed in. He was an educationist of rare ability. So that the evaluations he made of society were not fortuitous but derived from concrete application and immersion. There were always many people around Kenneth Koma. Most children forwarded to him for their upkeep education and care. There were always party members bringing to him this or that issue.

Let us not suggest that Kenneth Koma was alone in all these. There were very many people also making huge sacrifices and often wrecking famiIly economies to propagate Koma's ideas. 

Some of the most known of his comrades no particular order or rank,  were MM Mareledi Giddie who for many years  was Secretary General and people thought he was being groomed for takeover,  and then there was the maverick Len, Lenyetse 'Chencha boy!' Koma. Len Koma is rare breed of socialist economist who always turned party economic budget and dismissing them as people unfriendly. The two were the other Soviet Union educated dialecticians, who it now appears they were here before their time.

There were great orators, Frank Marumo,  Mme Mma Marumo who was amongst the earlier cadres of women, Comrade Ruth Motsete who engaged mostly with government structures, comrades O.K. Menyatso, Conference Lekoma, James Ramoroko Pilane, Todd Khulman, Klass Motshidisi, Dikobe Modikwe, the explosive Morotsi Fish Keitseng, Mack Mosepele, Knox Kowa, James Olisitse, Motsie Madisa, Othata Motlogelwa, Karlmon Mogalakwe  Maitshwarelo Dabutha,  Toga Budulala, Bothojamotho Moloi of the infamous Kgobati saga,  and many others whose names shall be remembered for as long as this country is looking for an  alternative economic order.

In Mochudi there was Comrade Sello Rapula who I believe has become the last Motswana to go Sehopha in modern times over his fights with Kgosi Linchwe.  You should also not forget that you cannot achieve a socialist transformation of society,  without a cadre of trained socialists. But in the end there was that Hegelian meditation 'Ba Ntshetse morago, mme, ga ba nthaloganye', ...they follow me, and yet they don't understand me!