Sometimes it feels as if this country is lighting fireworks for a battle that was never fought. You hear the noise, see the flashes, and for a moment it feels like victory. Then you pause and realize nothing actually happened. That is exactly what comes to mind watching RFP these days. The fireworks are loud, but the field is empty…just like their promises!
I still remember the campaign trail. Perhaps you do as well. There was a sense of freshness in the air. RFP promised a revolution, and it was not shy about the word. The talk was of meritocracy, clean governance, accountability, a new way of doing things. It was meant to be the break from corruption and mediocrity that people had been craving for years. And many of us believed it. Some of us desperately wanted to believe it…man we believed crooks!
Fast forward to the present and the picture is entirely different. What we have is a government more concerned with being seen than with actually delivering. Every minor gesture is stretched into a grand moment. A pothole patched suddenly becomes an achievement to be broadcast.
This is not the revolution that was promised. It is a scam. And not the kind of scam that leaves you moved or enlightened. It is the kind where the cabinet members exaggerate every line because they know the script is weak. The applause is sought more than the substance.
The reliance on easy wins has become the pattern. They are convenient. They look good in photographs, they “trend” online, they create the sense of movement. But they are hollow. Patching roads here and there is an easy win. Reforming procurement so that contracts are fair and transparent is the hard work. Opening a computer lab is easy. Reforming education so that deployment of teachers is fair and the curriculum makes sense is the hard work. Announcing reforms in speeches is easy. Building the systems to actually enforce accountability is the hard work. RFP has chosen the easy path because it provides instant applause. Yet applause without delivery is a poor substitute for progress.
And if we are honest, the crowd plays its part too. Basotho reward the performances. The cheering often drowns out scrutiny. Opposition parties, even when they raise points that are plainly correct, are jeered down. Their arguments are dismissed not on merit, but because of who they are. I find myself doing it as well at times, shaking my head at the opposition out of habit rather than engaging with the substance of what is being said. It is easier to clap than to ask questions. Easier to laugh than to pause and reflect.
That is how standards slip. When governments are rewarded for gestures rather than results, mediocrity becomes the national benchmark. We start calling the bare minimum a breakthrough. We applaud promises rather than delivery. We adjust our expectations downward without even noticing. Over time, the very idea of demanding better begins to feel unrealistic.
Meritocracy was supposed to be the cornerstone of this revolution. Yet meritocracy is not a speech. It is an operating principle. It shows itself in how people are appointed to boards, how tenders are decided, how performance is evaluated, and how non-performers are dealt with. It means competence over proximity. It means impartial rules instead of personal loyalty. What we see now is the opposite. Proximity to power carries more weight than ability. Contracts resemble rewards for friends. Appointments look like favors. People do not need a forensic investigation to notice this. You can sense it in the air.
The obsession with optics is not free of cost. It drains energy, money, and political capital that could be used on reforms with real impact. It lowers the standard by which success is measured. If a government can celebrate for doing what should be its routine duty, or even for things it never actually delivered, then the whole society begins to settle for less. That is how decline sets in quietly. Not with a collapse, but with a gradual acceptance of mediocrity.
It is deeply offensive to think back on the promises and compare them to what we have now. Offensive that those who championed revolution and meritocracy have handed us kleptocracy instead. Offensive that people who once demanded accountability now want us to clap for shadows. Offensive that serious people who know exactly what is happening are willing to play along and exaggerate the significance of the smallest gestures.
Governance was supposed to be different. Instead it has become a show, with the loudest cheers reserved for the emptiest acts. The revolution that was promised has been traded for pageantry. The vision of meritocracy has been abandoned for the convenience of proximity. And the people, whether out of fatigue or habit, continue to clap for the fireworks even though the battle never happened.
A government that promised to fight corruption should not be in the business of celebrating illusions. It should be in the trenches, fixing the problems it swore it would fix, and allowing results to speak for themselves. Until that day comes, perhaps the best service we can render as citizens is to withhold our applause. Let us save our cheers for the moment something real arrives, because a country cannot build its future on noise and smoke.
