An ode to David 'Mdavo' Mhiemang

RAMPHOLO MOLEFHE | Monday July 30, 2012 00:00

 

Mhiemang is also of the generation of Lenyeletse Koma, who served on the central committee of the BNF in the capacities of secretary for labour, political education and economy at various stages. He had built a reputation as an enterprising businessperson before he committed himself to studying law at the University of Bophuthatswana in modern-day North West Province of South Africa. In later years, he often spoke of himself as a journalist, an economist, a lawyer and a political scientist.From Mafikeng, Mhiemang wrote several articles for publication in The Botswana Guardian on legal topics around 1983 and 1984.

He visited Botswana regularly, taking part in the historic campaign that took Botswana National Front leader, Kenneth Koma, to parliament, giving the organisation the status of a credible alternative government.  At around that time, Mhiemang successfully campaigned for the position of secretary for legal affairs on the central committee of the BNF.Amicably known as 'Bra Day', he kept his relationship with the press alive and was an active member of the Botswana Press Club.

He contributed to the first test of my treasured aspiration to good journalism ethics and professional behaviour, together with his fellow tribesman and my professional colleague, Outsa Mokone. I was the chairperson of the Botswana Journalists Association and an avid supporter of the Press Club that BOJA had established at the Grand Palm. I did not deserve to be chairperson if I could not uphold the ethics of the profession.  Mhiemang was legal secretary of the party that was challenging for political power and he could not readily admit to giving false information to a journalist.He had invited me to my office away from The Guardian, across the street at the President Hotel.  Once there, Mhiemang informed me that he (and others) believed that Kenneth Koma had had a meeting with President Ketumile Masire about which the central committee of the BNF was not told.

I asked Masire's secretary, Bergsman Sentle, who said there was never such a meeting, unless it had taken place without his knowledge, which was most unlikely. (A hindthought informs me that I should have asked Koma whether he was holding secret meetings with Masire, and about what).

I passed the story to my editor because:* It was a story about presidents of the country

* Mhiemang was an official in the leading organ of the organisation and he should be the unlikeliest person to give false information to a journalist. He also gets the benefit of the doubt because he was legal secretary. It was published with the denial by Sentle but without revelation of Mhiemang's part in it.

The opposing arguments were:* My part:  Protection of sources is intended to protect weak and vulnerable people who want to give the public good information which invariably attracts a vicious reaction from powerful people that run the country and the economy.  It is not intended to protect sources that deliberately and knowingly give false information to journalists for the purpose of achieving an outcome that favours them at the expense of the truth.

* Mhiemang: Journalists have no obligation to reveal sources.  Helpful people will stop giving information for fear that their identities will be revealed to authorities.  He had support from some journalists. I emerged from the scuffle more edified about my passion, the study of the ethics of journalism.  I concluded that ethics are larger than law.  Law kneels down to the class interests of the powerful people in society who sit in parliament and the captains of big business who sponsor the campaigns of the politicians.  The law protects celebrity, not ordinary people.Ethics demand of the holder that he should work by the truth, or as close to it as is humanly possible.  Some measure of morality guides the journalist in his observation of the principle of protection of sources. The code of ethics was not intended to allow abuse of journalists or to facilitate the passing of false information to the unsuspecting public.  This is a practice that is endemic in big business and it belongs nowhere in the business of the pursuit of the public interest. In the end, I learnt a great deal and would hope that Mokone and 'Bra Day' also did. You might say 'Bra Day 'was also something of an eccentric, not averse to adversity and controversy. His friendship with the press did not prevent him from whipping Mmegi news editor, Stryker Motlaloso, at a BNF rally in 2002.  A camera was damaged and there were threats of a suit.Mhiemang and Arafat Khan also appeared in the news denying involvement in the controversy between the Royal Kgotla of BaKwena and the Ministry of Local Government under Minister Margaret Nasha. David Mhiemang was a committed BNF activist who stood for political office in Kweneng where he had also built a farm. If only I had accepted his invitation to eat goat meat and drink milk there...

In his peculiar - if somewhat naughty - way, Bra Day also seemed to live out the Baha'i principle of being generous in prosperity and thankful in adversity. In one convivial evening afternoon that I and colleague Douglas Tsiako, who is a Baha'i, spent with Mhiemang at Extension 14's Kofifi in Gaborone, he promised us each a swathe of real estate because he reasoned that committed communists should not be defined by poverty. He had discovered, he informed us, the means by which the wealthy - crooks to boot - came into land and had wasted no time making use of it to himself become the possessor of land of endless dimensions. As worthy comrades, we should also join the realm of Botswana's landed gentry in order that we may continue the struggle from a position of strength. Of course, he added, he also had land acquired by the more traditional means of inheritance and so could well afford to donate to worthy comrades.We may never have obtained the land, but we well know that 'Bra Day' meant well by his offer, though there was a distinct Robin Hood quality to it. And perhaps my friend Doug, being a Baha'i, might know of a way of gaining access to 'Bra Day's estate in the next world, though the thought of its conditions being even slightly similar to present hardships makes me shudder. The episode reminded me of the '40 acres and a mule' that were promised to free slaves in the US but were taken and returned to their previous white owners after the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln in April 1865. That is not to suggest that Mhiemang would give and take, though give-and-take underlines relations among comrades. It is the way memory functions that I find myself thinking that it would be apt for Barak Hussein Obama to remember 40 acres and a mule! I am not in any way be a necromancer, but I wish 'Bra Day' to know that the struggle to which he was committed will not cease until it has met its objectives. After all, justice is inevitable. The ethics of journalism and the Occupy Wall Street movement can attest to this. Permit me now to borrow from Baha'is by saying, Allah'u'Abha 'Bra Day!