Free-speech muzzling law

Some people may be wondering why I shut down my “nkalangaunozwida” blog. Well, there are several reasons, most significant of which is the imminent tabling of a “cybercrime law”. This is a draconian piece of legislation. In the guise of outlawing criminal behaviour such as online child pornography, cyber stalking, cyber bullying, the law will effectively silence not only social media, but mainstream news media as well:

“A person who wilfully, maliciously or repeatedly uses electronic communication of an offensive nature to disturb or attempt to disturb the peace, quiet or privacy of any person with no purpose to legitimate communication, whether or not a conversation ensues, commits an offence and is liable to a fine not exceeding P20 000 or to imprisonment of a term not exceeding one year, or both.”

The strife that is expected to characterise the next general elections in 2019 as a result of the Government outlawing use of a paper ballot at elections, and replacing such ballot with an electronic voting machine (EVM), is the probable reason why draconian legislation has to be aimed at computer use.

A strange facet of the legislation is the recurring phrase “by means of a computer or a computer system…” It is as if the intention is less about outlawing criminal activity than it is about outlawing use of a computer.  For example, it has always been a crime to “insult another person on the basis of race, colour, descent, nationality, ethnic origin, tribe or religion” regardless of the method by which such insult is uttered. The proposed bill’s pronouncement:

“A person who, by means of a computer or a computer system, insults another person on the basis of race, colour, descent, nationality, ethnic origin, tribe or religion commits an offence and is liable to a fine not exceeding P40 000 or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years or to both” 

clearly shows that the computer and not the act per se, is being targeted for outlawing by this law.

In this day and age there is hardly any human activity that is done without use of a computer or computer system. Cameras, phones, note pads all have computers embedded in them. The law proposes to outlaw taking of photographs at accident scenes, purportedly to protect families of accident victims from seeing their maimed or killed relatives on social media before they are “officially” informed by the police. What this means is that relatives will first have to apply for police permission to take photographs at accident scenes. If the supposed “police” were somehow implicated in the “traffic-accident” you can imagine how difficult it would be, especially for relatives, to get permission to photograph such an “accident” scene! In a continent where “Intelligence Services” routinely arrange the demise of opposition activists in “traffic accidents”, outlawing of cameras at “accident” scenes might be just what the doctor ordered; for the “Security Services” of course.

Some people may wonder why there seems to be little or no civil society opposition to the proposed draconian legislation.  Close examination reveals a carefully laid out plan by the ruling party to blackmail the parliamentary opposition into helping pass the bill with very few, if any obstacles. There has been a rumour doing rounds in the press, that some prominent ruling party political leaders are in possession of illegally acquired and highly compromising extra-marital sex videos of some prominent opposition political leader/s, which videos they are threatening to release into cyberspace just before the 2019 general elections. Given such a scenario it is understandable why the concerned opposition political personalities and their supporters would be keen to support the proposed “anti-cybercrime” draconian legislation. The ruling party has almost literally grabbed the opposition by the b…..ls.

And so dear reader, this blog “myikalanga.blogspot.com” hereby falls silent too.

Maybe it's all fake news.

Suppose Spain imposes direct rule on Catalonia and then "suspends" it! That is what my friend says seems to be in the pipeline. I just laughed at the suggestion. I mean we are looking at the possibility of people dying here, aren't we?

And so this blog falls silent for good.

If you look at my Introduction and my Interests on this blog, you will see that the blog has achieved its objectives:

I have gone far back into history and (hopefully) helped bring you and me closer together.

I have, I believe, successfully traced Tswana language back to its Martian past, and thus debunked the myth that Sumerian/Coptic/Sotho/Tswana language has been spoken by Earthlings longer than Kalanga language.

None of the above would have been possible had they not commanded that I fall (ndiwe); had they not protected me for close to seventy years. Their most cryptic act of course was to suggest "hey demigod, how about fulfilling your mission now?"

And so, this blog falls silent for good.

My apologies, technology is playing tricks on me; it's not this blog that has fallen silent, but "nkalangaunozwida.blogspot.com". The blog "myikalanga.blogspot.com" may continue for a while longer.

Tswana language is killing our nation

It is no secret that our people are no longer able to speak English fluently. This form of acquired illiteracy is most evident among Kalanga-speaking ministers or should I say "deputy ministers" as that is where most of the hand-picked Kalanga political surrogates end up.

You see, Kalangas have to contend with learning two foreign languages - Tswana and English, whereas Tswana speakers only have to learn English. The result is an unbearable load of an unnecessary language. There is nothing wrong in learning a national language such as Kalanga or Tswana or Mbukushu, as long as the aim is to be able to converse/communicate with fellow citizens in our country, but it is quite unacceptable to be required to master that language, unless it is your own language. What I am saying is that non-Tswana speakers should not be required to learn Tswana at all, unless they want to be professional linguists. There should most certainly be no requirement that to get a job at Botswana Television one should speak Tswana, let alone be "fluent" in Tswana!

We Kalangas can win this fight for our language, for our right to bring up our children under our cultural tutelage, by not only refusing to speak Tswana at official gatherings, but by speaking our language at any gathering where a Tswana speaker uses Tswana. If a Tswana speaker rises in Parliament and speaks in Tswana language, then let a Herero rise and address same Parliament in Herero, let N-Khwa rise up and address same Parliament in Tjikhwa, let a Subiya rise up and address same Parliament   in TjiSubiya. Let the people refuse to bow to this insane imposition of Tswana culture on them.

Why is it that in the South African Parliament one can speak Zulu or Tswana or Afrikaans without adverse repercussions? We non Tswanas must throw off this yoke. This is after all our land! We cannot, and we should not expect any political party to have the courage to advance this course on our behalf. It is our fight.

Dump EVM case; take to the streets.

I am a computer, dear Reader; so are you. We both follow a logical process to arrive at decisions that we make. Almost daily we are "hacked" by those who successfully deceive us, albeit temporarily. Sometimes we need external inputs (leakers of otherwise inaccessible information) to recover from such hacks. Sometimes other recovery algorithms kick in to raise enough doubt to force us to investigate and "plug" the hack-hole. And yet we are the most sophisticated computer known to man, i.e to us!

So if the Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) is a computer (and only Gabriel Seeletso thinks it is not) there is no  disputing the fact that it can be hacked. There is no need to prove that fact. A computer made by man is infact a hack into the brain of man! And if it is a hack into something more sophisticated than itself, it stands to reason that that something will not have any problem whatsoever hacking it (the computer) as long as access to the computer by the brain is provided.

Access by the brain to the EVM is fundamental to the "correct" functioning of the EVM. Left on its own, the EVM would probably not know that Jack has voted and that the person now waiting to vote is Jill and not Jack again! Some human input will have to constantly tell the EVM to "reset and get ready for next voter". Therein lies human access to the EVM; therein lies a potential hack opportunity. Even if it was to be assumed that the EVM will be so sophisticated as to be hooked to face-recognition software, there is still the human access necessary to extract the vote tallies. That is an opportunity for a hack.

That a computer can be hacked is not reason enough for a judge to rule that the EVM may not be used in the 2019 elections. Why this is so, is quite obvious. If the litigants manage to get hold of the exact model of EVM that is going to be used during 2019 elections; get hold of an expert who successfully hacks the EVM; then the EVM manufacturer can simply assure the judge that come election time, that particular "hole" in the EVM software will have been "plugged". And once revealed, that particular hole will most certainly be plugged. But that does not mean that there are NO other holes left. Most importantly, a judge may want to know if litigants would not want to fly in an aircraft with autopilot installed, just because such autopilot is controlled by a computer and is therefore susceptible to hacking.

What I am saying here is that no further effort should be expended in trying to "show" that a computer can be hacked. That would be wasted effort. The litigants' effort should instead be applied to show that the use of EVM would be unconstitutional in other ways. For example, the EVM is going to eliminate the "problem" of spoilt ballots.

To my recollection spoilt ballots have always been a feature of past elections. They were counted and reported.  A  ballot is not always spoilt unintentionally. Given a list of candidates, all of whom are unacceptable to the voter, a voter "abstains" by spoiling his/her ballot. It is a legitimate act by the voter, and therefore it is constitutional. How then is the EVM going to elliminate spoilt votes without infringing on the constitutional rights of voters?

I know next to nothing about the intricacies of our constitution. However, I believe that our contitution has to be constitutional. Contradiction? No. You see, our constitution, i.e. the real (unwritten) one was forged in the streets of Francistown and Mochudi in the late 1950's - early 1960's. Some of us are old enough to have witnessed that struggle; -bo- P.G. Matante; -bo-Podiephatshwa; -bo-Tumelo; -bo-Bobby Mack (who later became a judge in Zambia). They marched in "Sotoma". They sang; they got whipped; they were incacerated. Those were our parents fighting for our freedom, for our independence.

If, as seems to be the case now, the written constitution subsequently veered off from the expectations of those who sacrificed so much for its attainment, then the people should take to the streets once again to reclaim their freedom, to kick out the EVM and its proponents.

As I have pointed out before, there could be a well calculated, sinister motive behind the rulers' insistance on the use of EVM in 2019. They could just be buying time; buying time so that none is left for implementation of the recommendations made by the African Union Election Observer Mission, following the 2014 general elections. Whether or not that is the real motive of the ruling party is open to debate. However, the legal route (and not a political one), that was embarked upon to fight the EVM debacle, played right into the hands of the enemies of our democracy! Now all they have to do is wait while the legal route saps the nation's energy to protest and resist.

Russians, more appropriately

I have posited before that what differentiates Bahurutshe from Bakhurutshe is that the former remained in Southern Africa, when the latter accompanied their Queen to Ethiopia or Egypt. Subsequently those who remained in Southern Africa morphed from "gatherers of lutshi" to "supervisors" in the digging/mining process.

The correctness of my thinking is reinforced by the Russian King's name - Czar. The name Czar is a corruption of the Kalanga word "tsha", meaning "dig". Thus the Russian King was the head digging Supervisor and was accordingly named according to the commands he shouted - "Dig!".

So Russians stayed in Southern Africa and are thus more appropriately referred to as Bahurutshe, rather than Bakhurutshe.

What were Arabs called at their origin in Africa?

It has been shown that the Coptic/Sotho/Tswana language is essentially the Sumerian language. The Arabic language is very closely related to these languages, if not one of their major dialects.  The word "Arab", in those languages means "one who boldly/loudly answers". The caller was the Anunnaki god "Ra", and the respondents became characterized as the Arabs, suggesting that those who refused to answer became non-Arabs.

But Kalanga language predates Sumerian/Coptic/Arab/Sotho/Tswana languages in ancient Egypt.  So, if the people we today call Arabs existed in Kalanga-speaking ancient Egypt, as we know they did, what were they called?

I have been puzzling over this for a long time. The answer hit me like a meteor last weekend as I watched a documentary of African history on TV. The presenter's name  is a Kalanga word - Badawi, and it means the same thing as "Arab". Let's unpack the phrase "Ba-da-whi". It is composed of a verb "ku da" meaning "to like/love", and the noun "whi" meaning "voice". Thus "Badawhi" means "those who like the voice".

And so Badawhi is what the Arabs were originally called, before the Sumerian/Coptic/Sotho/Tswana language hit the African shores. My apologies to Zeinab!    

All presidents and VPs were/are southerners.

The ignorance often displayed by supposedly well informed people in Botswana can be quite astounding. I am not a regular follower of events surrounding the ruling Botswana Democratic Party's (BDP's) current leadership succession battle, but I occassionally come across the debate in the press. Some "prominent" BDP leaders have suggested that Vice President Mokgweetsi Masisi deserves to succeed President Ian Khama because unlike Khama, Masisi is a southerner.

I have no interest in which BDP leader succeeds Ian Khama. What I am concerned about is that all presidents, starting from Seretse Khama to the current president, his son Ian Khama, were/are southerners. While Masisi may be coming from a place that is more "South" than Khama's place of origin, the two men nevertheless both come from the Southern half of our republic. Cynics may even characterise them as both coming from the infamous South-East quadrant of the republic.
The 22 degrees South latitude cuts Botswana into roughly two HALVES, one to the north, and the other to the south. For clarity, we are talking about the line of latitude that passes just south of Bobonong, Selibe Phikwe, Serule, Xara, Khwee, Gyom/Molapo, and forms our country's "elbow" that nudges Namibia on our western border with that country.

The 22 degrees latitude not only divides our country into halves, but has a huge historical significance. I had occassion to live with my grandfather who was a politically concious young man in 1885, when the British colonisers established that line of latitude as the Northern boundary of Bechuanaland Protectorate. Grandfather maintained, right up to his death in the sixties, that the boundary between Kalangas and Tswanas was around Serule/Motloutse rivers. I was never able to verify the truth or otherwise of Grandfather's assertion during his lifetime. However I have since come across a map showing British possessions in South Africa in 1885. You can "google" it. That map clearly shows that the said 22 degrees latitude was the northern boundary of Bechuanaland Protectorate in 1885.

A few conclusions can be drawn from the said map.

• In 1885 there was no Bamangwato authority north of  Serule, because the Bamangwato Chief Khama iii was by then a British subject, and yet there was no British possession north of Serule. This is not to say there were no Bangwato north of Serule. Bangwato north of Serule, just like the other Kalanga tribes, had their own leaders who owed allegience to  the supreme Kalanga Mambo. 
• The establishment of the "Bamangwato tribal Territory" was entirely a British imposed action upon the Babirwa, whose territory, according to the said map, is clearly marked as "Matebeleland; Makalaka country".
• There were no tribal territories. A tribal IDENTITY was no more than a work-group designation inherited from the Anunnaki. It had no territorial significance whatsoever.

The language we Kalangas call Tjirwa, now called Setswana, was among the many languages spoken by the Mambo's subjects. There were other equaly and even more widespread languages: Venda; Khwee; Subiya; TjiYeyi; Mbukushu; Nambdza; Lilima; Shona; Nguni. The British imposed Setswana chiefs, and NOT Setswana language, on non-Setswana speaking peoples. It was Seretse Khama who imposed Setswana language on non-Setswana speaking peoples, after the British granted us "Independence".

The bottom line is that all Botswana's presidents and Vice presidents since Independence, including Seretse Khama have been from the SOUTH of the Republic. The irony of it is that these presidents and their VPs led a party whose electoral strength lies mostly in the NORTH of the Republic. Talk of brain-washing!

All past election ballots have not been secretly cast.

The way we have always conducted voting during general elections has NOT been, strictly speaking, by SECRET ballot. Secrecy of a ballot does not only mean that the voter enters the booth "alone". It also means that the person into whose custody the ballot papers end up being deposited, whether for counting or safe-keeping, CANNOT match the ballot papers to the corresponding vote casters. Anything short of this compromises the secrecy of the ballot. Sadly, it has always been possible to construct a full correspondence between the vote casters and the cast ballots. This is how:

Voters stand in single file, and as each voter enters the voting precicnt, a tent, his/her name is read out aloud from the voters' roll. Thus anybody listening can draw up an ordered list of voters as they enter the voting boot. Indeed the party representatives present need just enter a number in ascending sequence, opposite the name of the voter on their copies of the IEC-supplied voters' roll. The above done, all interested "observers" have an ordered list of voters at the relevant polling station. Now all they need is to obtain an oredered list of ballot papers cast at the same station and voila, the match between ballot caster and ballot paper is done. "Cast in stone" one could say!

The ordered list of ballot papers is provided by the people conducting the vote, i.e. the Independent E lectoral Commission (IEC). A stack of ballot papers is piled on the table. Each paper has a serial number written on it, and the numbers are sequential. If the number on the top paper is C070563243, then the paper below it carries the number C070563244, the paper below that one is numbered C070563245 and so on. Now, here is the catch: you the voter, are not allowed to take any ballot paper other than the one right at the top of the stack! You cannot choose a ballot paper low down on the pile so as to achieve a level of anonymity. And what's worse, the police are sitting right next to the ballot papers, complete with their handcuffs. I have been threatenned with arrest when I insisted on pulling a ballot paper low down on the stack. Needless to say, I complied.

The serial numbers of the ballot papers supplied to any polling station are publicly announced, at least to the representatives of political parties. No attempt is made by IEC personnel to cover the serial number on the topmost ballot paper either. Consequently, armed with the self-composed oredered list of voters and the IEC-announced range of ORDERED ballot serial numbers, any "observer" then easily matches a voter's identity to the corresponding ballot paper cast by that voter. Secrecy my foot!

But a good level of ballot secrecy can be achieved even without sophisticated tools. Twenty people can be allowed into a tent/pre-booth, not withstanding the oredered list of the twenty that any "observer" present may have compiled. Twenty ballot papers from the oredered stack can then be supplied so that the twenty people choose their ballot papers RANDOMLY. Only after all the twenty people have acknowledged receipt of a ballot paper, can the ballot casting then begin for them. Within the group of 20, it will be virtually impossible to match a ballot caster to the ballot!

Such a method of casting votes will not achieve 100 % anonymity, but it will go a long way towards ensuring a minimally acceptable level of voter anonymity.

The Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) saga is confusing many people. Some people advocate use of the machines, provided the machines print something called Voter Verified Paper Trail (VVPAT). Other people, among whom I count myself, reject the EVM unconditionally, VVPAT or no VVPAT. Yet a third group ofcourse, want the EVM adopted and used as the current legislation stipulates - no VVPAT. Among the numerous arguments presented against VVPAT by the third group of people is that VVPAT compromises the secrecy of the ballot. I do not know enough about VVPAT implementation to argue for or against such a view.

What I do know is that an EVM is a computer. It therefore participates in the vote-casting process as an active agent. If it can add my vote to that of the previous voter who voted for the same candidate as me, then it is perfectly capable of NOT adding my vote as just described. By so doing it will have interfered with my vote! Furthemore, the EVM can be made to print two lists; list 1 corresponding to how the voter has voted, while list 2 corresponds to how the vote rigger has programmed the EVM to "cast its own vote, using the voter's ID". The voter in the booth could then be presented with list 1, while list 2 is conveniently hidden away. Unless the voter CAN sign list 1 to authenticate his/her vote, then there is nothing stopping the EVM scammers/riggers replacing list 1 with list 2 at the counting centres, and correspondingly replacing the numbers of votes as genuninely cast by voters with votes "as cast independently by the EVM, using the voters' IDs". Using this unsigned method, a fraudulent VVPAT (list 2) will end up corresponding exactly to the fraudulent ballot count presented as the election result. Using a signed list 1 on the other hand might prevent the fraud, but just like the current "OPEN" ballot casting method, a signed list 1 might compromise ballot secrecy.

So there really is only one safe option where EVM are concerned - they have to be UNCONDITIONALLY rejected. One last thing to note is that the moment a rigged EVM has the voter's roll programmed into it, the voters are not really needed any more; the EVM can do the voting all by itself, and produce nice rigged results!

How to defeat EVM

There is one strategy which can render the proposed use of Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) at the next general election in 2019 ineffective, or even impossible. The strategy involves denying the EVM a database. That database is the voters' roll. If voters refuse to register for the elections, there will be no voters' roll to program into the EVM.

To counter such an eventuality, the EVM scammers are feverishly scrounging around for other sources of the voters' roll. They have now turned to banks to force customers to "renew" their accounts on the pretext of compliance with International anti-money laundering standards. What gives the game away is the banks' demand for a letter/affidavit from the customer's chief (kgosi) stating that the customer is a bona fide member of the chief's subjects, resident at such and such a location. The banks will not accept the national "Omang" identification as proof that the customer is a bona fide subject of some chief in Botswana, and yet to obtain the "Omang", one had to produce such a letter in the first place. So why is the Omang ID not sufficient for "renewal" of the account?

The answer is the EVM voters' roll. The EVM scammers among whom we count the "IEC" are setting up emergency sources of the voter's roll, in case the population refuses to register for the 2019 elections. They foresee a real possibility that the EVMs will be denied a voter's roll, so they are making contigency plans to counter that right away.

Our National Anthem expresses national surrender!

The Earth which we as a species inhabit, is not a gift from God. Rather, it is we as a species that are a gift to the Earth from God. The “country” that is known as “Botswana” is not a gift from God. It is a piece of Earth that for thousands of years, we have successfully defended against marauding rhinoceroses, lions, elephants, hyenas and (lately) from slave-gathering Europeans.
What is undoubtedly a gift from God is our democracy. You see, our democracy is a product of our rationality as human beings, and that rationality comes from God. We know that to avoid self-annihilation we have to tamper our natural individual competitiveness with submission to the rule of the majority. And that rule of the majority can only be established through free, fair and credible elections. Our democracy is not a gift from the ruling party (BDP), nor is it a gift from Parliament. Our democracy is not guaranteed by the constitution. It is the constitution that has to be anchored on our democratic ideals. In short, our democracy is inviolable. Take it away and we will go to war! That is what God would command us to do; and that is what our national anthem should reflect.
The electronic voting machine (EVM) is a direct attack on our democracy, not because the EVM can be hacked, not because the EVM was introduced by the ruling BDP, but because the EVM is an active agent between me, a voter casting my vote, and another voter who has to count my vote and convince me that my vote is part of the minority. It is on record that many voters have expressed unhappiness with the use of non-transparent ballot boxes that we have used for the past fifty years. But the potential of these non-transparent boxes to compromise the credibility of an election outcome pales into insignificance when compared to the absolute havoc that an EVM, as an ACTIVE AGENT, can do.
So why is the BDP government insisting on the use of EVM’s in 2019? We can only guess. The EVM is the stick, while the ten million Pula “constituency” allocation is the carrot.
The BDP know, as anybody who has passed basic secondary education does, that the EVM is a computer, and that it can therefore be used to override and change the election choice of any voter. The BDP are therefore using this knowledge as a stick to whip (read recruit) voters into joining their party. Who would dare join parties that they know will be relegated to the dustbins of history by the EVM?
The P10 million “carrot” could be used to entice election candidates of other political parties to defect to them, once the elections hurdle has been passed. We know that our political system, where an elected official is answerable only to him/her self, makes it possible for a political party to lose all the 57 seats in Parliament, but end up “buying” all 57 members of Parliament (MP’s). This is especially possible if the concerned MP’s can be made to sign secret agreements before the elections. The threat of exposure of such agreements could then be used to blackmail such MP’s into “defecting” to the buying party.
There is yet another role the EVM controversy is playing to the benefit of the BDP. The nation has been demanding that ballot boxes be counted at the polling stations rather than being carried long distances to “counting centres”. The African Union Observer Mission report on the 2014 elections also made such a recommendation. The EVM controversy is now diverting the nation’s attention from that and many other demands. 
The result is not very hard to imagine. In the event that the nation “wakes up” before 2019 and refuses to vote through the EVM, Ian Khama could then declare that we revert back to the old system and use it without modification. He could even declare a state of emergency and continue hanging onto power!