In 2015, let us insult presidents as they insult us

In 2015, let us insult presidents as they insult us

By Opoka Christopher Arop

My year could not have started better. The year 2013 will forever remain engraved in our hearts as a year of desperation and despair. We ran, we walked and we talked; all in vain-less hope that good would come out of our predicament if we shouted as loud as we could.

Recent insults or at the very least attempts at insulting the opposition SPLM politicians for their power greed forced the hands of President Salva Kiir to pull some few bats out of his hat. And he did it in style. The bats were hairy and with pointy teeth. He called his fellow comrades “dogs”. He touted the so called SPLM reformists as homeless “dogs” that will soon return at the feet of their master, having found no other better place.

Believe me you, this is a good chapter in our pages of freedom of speech. The president’s right to respond in this fashion has lifted a veil of ignorance that a president being one of the most senior government officials should refrain from such rhetoric. President Salva simply gave his opponents a sample of what they should expect. And I have every right to expect a humorous election campaign, should Prof. Abednego scoop some of the hidden oil revenues for which or not former Finance and Economic Planning minister Aggrey Tisa Sabuni was sacked.

I expect a torrent of insults. I also expect a rejuvenation of our world of U-tube and facebook posts. I expect flares and tantrums on twitter. Why not? We are as fashionable when it comes to the best things. Our soldiers brandish the latest SMG’s, but still require the boots of UPDF on the ground to show them lessons on the terrain of a land they claim to have fought for and known in and out.

Book titles have been on my mind all week. From the NgugiWaThiong’o book; ‘I will Divorce When I want’ to ‘Satan’s Bits of Wood’ by OusmaneSembene to John Steinbeck’s ‘Oils of Wrath’. I even fancied Henrik Ibsen’s ‘A Friend of the People’ and yet another title by Ngugi, but this time, the classic ‘Wizards of GoSS’.

This deliberate alteration of one word with another is just that. Deliberate! President Bashir once called South Sudanese cockroaches; to my dismay, South Sudan with all its pomp and pride, remained silent. We hardly demonstrated on the streets of Juba. I am hopeful, that our theatre of insults will have an appropriate baptism as initiated by President Salvatore.

We are not too late for the “insult jamboree”. In Zambia, call the president a “potato” at your peril.Yes, a potato.This seemingly innocuous word, used to describe deceased Zambian President Michael Sata during a radio show, got an opposition leader thrown in jail and charged with defamation. If convicted, Frank Bwalya faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison.

Points for calling your leader a spud.But this is hardly the most colorful insult one finds in the region. I was told by a friend at a media conference in Nairobi, Kenya that the word “potato” is decoded differently following the court case. So this is a word I hope my President can add to his dictionary of fashionable insults.

May be some context will help: In comparing Zambia's late president to a potato, the actual phrase used was “chumbumushololwa,” a Bemba term that literally means a sweet potato that breaks easily when bent. It refers to someone who is stubborn and inflexible, and who won’t listen to the opinions of others.

Bwalya’s supporters argue that this is not an insult, but rather “a perfectly legitimate way for one politician to describe a fellow politician, if indeed that person is stubborn by nature.”Either way, it seems an apt description for late President Sata, who was known for his sharp tongue and increasingly autocratic behavior since being elected president in 2011.

I have had the opportunity not to have missed on the limping animal joke. I once wrote that, if the leader limps, the people will soon start limping, as a prelude to the “Limping donkey” insult in Zimbabwe.

In Zimbabwe, dozens of cases have been filed in recent years under a law that makes it a crime to insult the president �" and which is often used to harass and intimidate critics of President Robert Mugabe.

Opposition activist Solomon Madzore was arrested after allegedly calling Mugabe a “limping donkey.”In the Shona language, the phrase “dhongirinokamina” refers to a lame daft animal that is no longer of any use and must be put out to pasture.

A Zimbabwe court ruled that the “insult law” is unconstitutional, and said prosecutors should not be overzealous about charging people who make comments about Mugabe “in drinking halls and other social places.”But reports from Zimbabwe suggest that despite the court ruling, the law is still being used.So maybe hold off on calling Mugabe a “limping donkey” just yet.

There is the “Bushman” insult in Southern Africa.This one wasn’t intended as an insult. But when a South African tourist spotted a framed portrait of Botswana's president at a border post and remarked that he “looks like a Bushman,” she quickly found herself in a world of trouble.

The woman was interrogated, kept in jail overnight and forced to pay a fine before being freed.The Bushmen �" also known as the San, or the Khoi �" are the original people of Southern Africa, some of whom still follow a traditional lifestyle as hunter-gatherers.

In Botswana they have faced discrimination and persecution by government officials. Ian Khama, the president of Botswana, once described their way of life as “an archaic fantasy.” “A South African person thought resembling a Bushman was complimentary, but Botswana officials took it as an insult,” the director of Survival International, a group that campaigns for the rights of indigenous people, said after the tourist's arrest in 2009.“You couldn't have clearer evidence of the racism towards Bushmen in Botswana than this incident.”

Just one more: “Tjajarag”.In South Africa, insults won’t get you locked up.President Jacob Zuma has been called a “monster,” a “tyrant” and “illiterate,” among many other things. The abaThembu king called him “a liar who doesn’t use condoms.”

Zuma too has been known to take mean swipes, for example calling the opposition party's parliamentary leader “ntombazana,” the Zulu word for a “young girl.” But one of South Africa's more colorful taunts made headlines a few years ago thanks to Julius Malema, the loudmouthed former African National Congress youth leader, who called a BBC journalist “tjatjarag.”

Not the easiest of words, but a useful one, meaning someone who is annoying, in a hyper and overly excitable sort of way.The pronunciation goes something like this: “cha-cha-raa-ch.”Tjatjarag.Mr. President and all Presidential and Legislative Assembly hopefuls should keep that one in their back pocket, and perhaps whiff out a translation in any native language during an election campaign.

The irony is that we are often too quick to react adversely to comments that are made in the heat of the moment. Our politics should transcend all these girlish and boyish stories of infidelities and focus on a mature politics. However, I must warn you that, as with our short history of engaging in copying and pasting in our legal system, our fate might be worse than that of #AlanWadiJAILED of Kenya.

If we are going to insult ourselves, let us at least be creative. President Kiir in his fury, rightly or not was somehow creative. [I mean he could have done better, had he consulted Ateny Wek Ateny or some few others in his office.] With all due respect, the least my president can do is be creative when he wants to make more use of adjectives than the speeches he is given!!