Pay attention, then applaud!
Bongi D D M Radipati | Monday February 7, 2022 06:00
You may answer that many or some, or worse, a few remember them now. Of course many of those who conceived them are now sadly deceased and have entered the pantheon as part of our nation’s heritage, while their surviving contemporaries are aging, but respectable members of our society. These national principles are innocuous, straightforward, and lucid terms than the rhetoric that sustained the then ideological duel between capitalism and socialism. Who, notwithstanding their ideological bent, would take issue with them or even seek to forget the desire of all nations immortalised in unity, self – reliance, development and democracy? In my view, the more they are forgotten, ignored or added to, the more they become constant and relevant as may have been intended by our nation’s forbearers. In any event, in a nation of fugitives (from memory), the one who returns home (to remembrance) always seems to be running away! To avoid this as a nation, we must surrender, almost despite ourselves, to the act of remembering.
I want to believe that this nation’s founders conceptualised these four national principles with collective seriousness and laid bare their innermost wishes for the fledgling republic.
They must have done so expecting that we who succeed them will, at appropriate times, project our honest interpretation of those wishes. Then they must have added human effort and improvised the pastiche of their forbearers. This is like a symphony in the classical music sense: a hefty lineup of accomplished musicians, with the alchemy of effort, collaboration and seriousness of purpose, and similar to the country’s four national principles, divided into four groups – of strings, woodwind, brass and percussion.
The world has many creative artists, few greatest ones, and among the greatest, not every work of theirs is an equal masterpiece. Maurice Ravel (1875-1937), a French composer and conductor of impressionist classical music is an exemplar of a great musician whose masterpiece, ‘Bolero’ (listen to it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9PiL5icwic ) is his most famous orchestral work.
Over several spring weeks of listening to ‘Bolero’ each morning, I was thoroughly entranced, yet also thoroughly incapable of converting my impressionistic thoughts on it to writing. Ultimately, I had to admit that the repetition of its simple theme throughout every section of the orchestra which then builds to a crescendo that ends with a loud boom is unique and instructive in its own right. Here, staring right at me, lay this deceptively simple task that paradoxically requires an enormous amount of effort to accomplish!
Just as the aspirations of a newly-independent Botswana could be rendered through the four national principles, with them, the country’s sovereignty was reinforced. And because of their simplicity, constancy and relevance, it was for the first and everlasting time, a national marvel. This nation’s budget speech time - upon us now - is equally an annual national marvel.
And inasmuch as the national principles and Ravel’s ‘Bolero’ do not so much lie on the pages on which they are written and read, as rise to give context and meaning to vital public performance itself, so does the annual budget speech, read to the nation through their attentive MPs.
Now, comparably, there is an enchantment of watching the conductor of ‘Bolero’ convey what she wants the orchestra to do, and in many instances, almost preceding the music with her own body language; of watching the hands and faces of the musicians and how they produce the remarkable sound; and of discerning dozens of string, woodwind, brass and percussion players evoking the imagery of singularity, unity, leadership and teamwork, and doing so repeatedly in song.
Even in a world that can be cynical, this country’s national principles are a kind of anthology for decent human values, indeed a collection that is both a vestige and a living example of this nation’s aspirations. Amazingly, they do all these without being ornate or self-indulgent. In that sense, I believe that they are evidence of a nation that knew itself well and thus are a minimized model of its mind.
Additionally, they have a peculiar irrepressible and immutable freshness. It is useful that they share these traits with Ravel’s ‘Bolero’. If you listen to it continually and closely, you will hear that its music resonates with the consistent march (to prosperity) of an unstoppable force (this nation) despite the obstacles it may encounter in that long journey. In fact, in this orchestral piece, the drums and snare are the relentless effort that has to contend with the obstacles imitated by the string and wind instruments, and in the coda – the latter part of the orchestral piece - bass and snare instruments succeed in overcoming them and triumphantly ending the music with a thunderous bang.
An enterprise such as the national principles, intended to be permanent and enabling, requires its people’s sustained interest and honest application. Therefore, applying its terms and paying attention to its trajectory in our lives become more advisable than indifference to it. Axiomatically, Ravel’s ‘Bolero’ can be a relevant metaphor of how the collaboration of people may help in keeping an enterprise such as the national principles alive. As these four national principles are noteworthy and thus are reverential, we must always pay attention and homage to them.
And as a tribute to Ravel’s ‘Bolero’ and its power to move us and remind us of our collective destiny, we ought always to listen attentively to it until its end is reached, and then applaud.
We must do likewise with the annual budget speech – for it symbolises a time when a popular forum, Parliament, is used for elevated purposes, to convey the power of our nation’s simple themes of development and when creative politics may lead us, yonder there.
*Radipati is a regular Mmegi contributor