Africa-Press – Lesotho. Hear, hear, hear! Mr Softie has created a fictitious diplomatic post. It’s called Resident Ambassador, meaning an ambassador leading no particular mission and its first dweller is Lesotho’s High Commissioner to London Rethabile Mokaeane who has been abruptly instructed to come back home.
So urgent is the new assignment that she has been ordered to be home within two weeks. The new position was created even before Basotho could understand what Lesotho’s ambassadors are doing in the foreign missions.
All we know is that they spend their time munching huge allowances and attending banquets. Sometimes they spar with their subordinates over minor issues. Others had opened shebeens in South Africa.
Occasionally, they will meet the prime minister and his diplomats at the airports for some protocol ritual whose benefit to the country can only be deciphered by Sandawana.
And that’s just about what they do at the missions. Now Basotho have to understand Mokaeane’s job as a resident ambassador. Will she have an office or staff at the Ministry of Drunken Affairs? What is her job description?
Good luck to those asking such inconvenient questions.
Muckraker is not waiting for answers because she knows none is forthcoming. She only wants to know if a resident ambassador is as useless as a Minister in the Prime Minister’s Office.
They are surely administrators of the same WhatsApp group. A Minister in the Prime Minister’s Office is like an overrated personal assistant always on the beck and call of the prime minister.
Their role is to meet people that the prime minister wants to avoid. They are the buffer between the prime minister and what he considers nuisances and riff-raff.
But they can also be assigned other tasks like attending mundane events, delivering speeches on the prime minister’s behalf and cleaning the prime minister’s political mess.
Other roles include wearing oversized suits to meetings and playing the clown to amuse the prime minister. Ideally, the job goes to a person of no known talents apart from bootlicking.
One Minister in the Prime Minister’s office was so ‘underworked’ and bored that he contrived to sign a dubious M2 billion deal with a phony company now suing the government.
His name is Temeki Tšolo and everyone knows he cannot even spell his name under pressure. For the sake of her reputation and sanity, Mokaeane should resist being saddled with that embarrassing post.
This is not just a demotion but a kick in the teeth. She must hoof back with a lawsuit and walk away. A resident ambassador is like a driver without a vehicle. A molisana without goats.
A resident ambassador should not be confused with an ambassador-at-large who is a senior diplomat or an ambassador-in-residence who is an ambassador to another country. The only resident ambassador known to Muckraker is the one who welcomes new residents at an old people’s home and helps them settle in.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs doesn’t need a Resident Ambassador but a counsellor to help drunk diplomats or assist those abruptly yanked out of their position to adjust to the misery of lapeng.
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