All signs are that the ruling Botswana Democratic Party will comfortably win the General Elections, but any hopes that there will be internal peace, let alone stability are irresponsibly ambitious.
The potential for instability, conflict, fallout, backlashes and even multiple splits is there for all to see. That the edifice did not collapse late last year is not so much on account of the party’s resilience as the leader’s perceived virtual immortality. In other instances the party’s survival of the turmoil brought by primary elections can also be attributed to sheer luck. While the dark cloud brought by the spectre of badly mismanaged primaries remains, the eye of the storm, we must admit, has since passed which on its own brings in a shaky aura of reassurance that we see holding in some quarters. An announcement has been made that the party will conduct hearings for protests in the near future.
Even the most optimistic of the lot do not expect anything substantial from such an exercise beyond appeasing and placating those that have reasons to feel cheated. An elephant in the room is the issue of who becomes Vice President, and eventually successor to President Ian Khama ÔÇô an issue that can only be resolved after general elections scheduled for October. And until this pertinent political question is settled, the BDP will continue to reside on a cliff, with a potential for conflict always a heartbeat away.
In the meantime President Ian Khama wields what is by all measure unassailable power, at both party and government. There is a background to it. Not only have all the monkeys that late last year prematurely made clandestine pretentions to the throne been thrown back into irrelevance, as a country we now find ourselves in a tragic position of uncertainty where close to half our cabinet are lame duck politicians; either because they have lost an internal party primary election contest as is the case with the Minister of Defence and the Minister of Local Government (two very key cabinet portfolios) or are publicly presumed not to be coming back, as is the case with the Vice President and also the Minister of Finance; two other very key portfolios in cabinet. And they are not the only ones. Faced with this dilemma, a few voices have been calling for a cabinet reshuffle. It is a wail in the dark.
Personally I am against any reshuffle, not least because it is immensely difficult to see what the rewards of such a cabinet reshuffle will be for the country at this point given the prevailing dynamics. This is by no means to say a cabinet reshuffle is inconceivable. Rather it is to assert that a cabinet reshuffle, if it comes to pass will not serve any purpose other than to make President Khama look insensitive and crude by creating an uncouth impression that ministers that recently lost primaries have in his world view all of a sudden now become expendable commodities.
One is hard pressed to be believe that given the difficulties from which the party is still emerging, President Khama would have an appetite for such a gun-ho inclination. Many of the defeated cabinet ministers that have lost primaries have done so because the primaries were inherently flawed, manipulated by a mafia-like cartel whose scale and complexity of operation is unprecedented in this country. They also lost because they had been sent on national duty by the president at a time when their political rivals were busy campaigning to dislodge them in their constituencies.
Further humiliating people who have all along been some of his staunch loyalist by removing them from cabinet through a reshuffle that will so evidently achieve nothing makes no sense whatsoever.
President Khama can never be that foolish. Other than inflating egos of a few beneficiaries, some of whom we must point out may also not be coming back after the General Elections, a cabinet reshuffle, implemented only a few months before parliament is dissolved to pave way for General Elections is a dangerously short term rectitude that could be counterproductive given the volatility currently prevailing at party level. The gist of the matter is that the gains, if ever there will be, can simply not justify the possible disruptions a cabinet reshuffle might usher. Admittedly, a President who every week finds himself surrounded by a group of cabinet members more than half of whom will in the next few months be literally scrounging for a living in some obscure village in the countryside because they are out of work and out of luck can hardly be a president who sleeps well at night. But removing them because they will soon be out anyway can be a risky undertaking no president wants to indulge on the eve of a national general election. This is a debate I have had with no less than three Members of Parliament over the Christmas vacation.
