‘ KE TAGILWE KE LETSATSI’

As University of Botswana Vice Chancellor, Professor Thabo Fako, routinely expressed grave concern about degree- conferring two- and- halfroomed houses being magically turned into “universities” and being mostly staffed by lecturers who themselves had never darkened the doorway of a university lecture room. At one such university, a secondary school drop- out from Kenya “taught” business law to degree students. Resultantly, Fako implored the powers- that- be to legally protect the word “university.” Similarly, the Botswana Alcohol Industry Association should advocate for legal protection of “drunk” and its variant forms. With summer setting in, some teetotallers are starting to talk about “drunkenness” that they get from the heat.

They express this with “Ke tagilwe ke letsatsi”, meaning “I am drunk from the heat.” Saying this when your body has never experienced the extreme physical torture that alcohol causes should be criminalised in much the same way that the United States penal code criminalises lying about having served in the army when you haven’t. The charge is called “stealing valour.” Saying “Ke tagilwe ke letsatsi” when you don’t know the sort of hangover that you get from drinking all night or consuming a whole bottle of Stroh 60 is stealing valour. Beer, whiskey, gin, liqueur or whatever type of alcohol has a percentage of alcohol concentration that is typically written on the container. None of the teetotallers claiming to be drunk from the heat when they have never actually scorched their tongues with fire water, can tell the alcohol percentage of heat from the sun. And, if they really want to get an idea of what drunkenness feels like, they should drink two sixpacks of Black Label beer on an empty stomach. They will pass out and when they get to, will begin to put respect on “drunk.”