Asking Khama to quit politics now is a little short of madness

Forget about Ian Khama coming here for July 1 celebrations that mark his father’s birthday over one hundred years ago. That is a none starter. A better bet is that he will back a winning horse in a Serowe by election due in a week’s time. There  is an ongoing crusade to get Khama to quit politics. That crusade has now reached evangelical pitch-like. Those at the forefront of the crusade say Khama should end his exile and come back to his royal duties. They add that by quitting politics he would then come back to attend to his assets and properties which they say are now in a state of disrepair since he moved to South Africa. We would not even care to talk about this crusade were it coming from Khama’s political opponents at the Botswana Democratic Party.

Such is to be expected. But we are told the crusade is led by the Ngwato royals – the royal uncles to be precise. That makes the crusade all the more absurd and bizarre. Their attempts to walk a populist zeitgeist leads me to believe that the uncles do not live in a real world. Their world is actually a pie in the sky. By asking Khama to abandon politics and take a position that would make him report to a director at the department tribal affairs, the Ngwato royal uncles are actually attempting to build a house of cards that will crumble down at the slightest contact with the wind. It is a crusade doomed to end up in failure; in ashes actually. Its time for the Ngwato royals and their handlers to get real and cease engaging in adventuristic thumb sucking. All their arguments against Khama’s continued involvement in politics lack credibility, even to a politically neutral bystander.