Tiro Sebina
11 November 2008
opinion
Anyone watching the 2008 State of the Nation Address on Btv may have noticed that President Ian Khama's address was peppered with a couple of asides and odd jokes.
What is the significance of jokes cracked in the context of an official speech meant to address serious national issues? There was an air of sombre seriousness in Parliament, yet the President managed to depart from the written script to make a couple of humorous and witty remarks.
It is necessary to dissect the presidential witty asides and jokes. Jokes are supposed to be frivolous and trivial, but they are not. They are often invested with an underlying serious significance. Jokes throw into question the distinction between the serious and the non-serious. It may be necessary to think seriously about the role of the jocular and the humorous in Botswana's political discourse. It is interesting that the President was able to graft witty remarks onto a speech distinctively underlined by an ideology of seriousness.
The speech stressed discipline. Discipline is a serious affair. That is why no member of the disciplined forces can dare burst into laughter during parade or inspection. Discipline is about conforming to rules and adhering to boundaries. That is why it would be unthinkable for one of the members of the presidential guard of honour to break into a jig as the head of state strides past him.
English philosopher Thomas Hobbes has a superiority theory of laughter in which 'the passion for laughter is nothing else but sudden glory arising from some sudden conception of some eminency in ourselves, by comparison with the infirmity of others'. In this sense, we joke out of a sense of superiority in relation to the weakness of others. Why is it always acceptable when it is the superior who jokes, while the subaltern is not always in a position to initiate a joke? Hobbes formulation helps us appreciate the power dynamics involved in jocular behaviour.
There is also something infantile about jokes. Playful adults who like joking, in an inoffensive manner, are often charming. Sigmund Freud further states that 'everything comic is based fundamentally on degradation (or stepping down) to being a child'. The President offered a punch-line joke when he articulated his administration's zero-tolerance of potholes, especially potholes "that have giraffes growing out of them". This witty remark deploys the technique of hyperbole to underline the urgency of having decent roads if the country wants to develop the tourism industry. Psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud observed, in his book Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious, that jokes were structured like dreams in that they were symbolic fulfilment of unconscious wishes. Jokes betray libidinal and deep-rooted wishes.
The President while congratulating his predecessor on winning the coveted Mo Ibrahim Award, remarked that 'Ebile ke te ke kope loan mo go ene.' How does this aside help in terms of promoting a spirit of self-reliance? What does the culture of asking for loans from colleagues suggest? Are we in a serious state of fiscal insecurity that the idea of soliciting loans is always hovering in our minds? Is it socially acceptable for colleagues to make bee-line for a colleague who has been blessed with a stash of cash windfall? It seems jokes are often underlined by transgression of social conventions. They put the boundary between the serious and the playful into radical question.
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