The most outstanding characteristic so far of the new cabal that took over control of the Botswana Democratic Party at the Maun Congress is their unbridled ambition.
Almost every member of the entire brigade sees themselves as a President of the republic some day.
We should put this into proper context.
The BDP lost its past mystique the moment it allowed every Harry, Dick and Tom to become a member of the Central Committee.
It was not always like this.
In the past, ascendance to BDP central committee used to be a reward for years if not decades of hard slog at committee levels.
Now the party is saddled with a central committee that cannot even organize primary elections which on its own might lead to an implosion the recovery from which might prove impossible.
Worse, because personal interest has replaced service, the moral compass which used to guide the party is no more, hence the ensuing instability.
People are in it for themselves; to eat, to use a phrase familiar to many of them.
The rise of the Maun brigade to the apex of BDP power is a tragic story of trickery, manipulation, lies, cheating and sordid ambition.
As it is, the true story of the rise of this brigade has yet to be told.
While everything is falling apart around them none of them has a clue of what to do to even keep the fairytale cardboard box house that they created standing.
Ironically President Ian Khama has had in propping some of them, including by sponsoring manifestly crooked legal opinions to get them into the central committee. The hope of course was that that some of them would break with their checkered past.
To his disappointment, their arrival has fuelled their old ways to altogether new heights.
They now want to topple him. It is a reward he has brought on himself.
Personally I’d be the last to sympathise with President Khama on this one. It serves him right.
Things are very bad inside the BDP. The tragedy of it is that we have not seen the worst yet.
Following the results of party primaries in the north of the country last week, President Khama has been badly isolated. My guess is that after the next round of primaries in the southern parts of the country, if things go according to Maun brigade’s pan, the country will be lumbered with a hostage President, by which stage he will virtually be powerless to govern, much less enforce disciple.
At the pace we are going, it will not be long before a member of these braggarts tells President Khama that he should get the bugger out and make way for one of them.
It may be an exaggeration, but it captures the point.
Ahead of all of us, by their behavior the Maun brigade of renegades has already started discounting President Khama.
Independent of the President, the brigade is now setting the succession rules, including planning of illegal cabinet reshuffles.
The unfolding saga would be a marvel to watch were the intentions not so evil not least because they will have an irreparable devastation on the integrity not just of our politics but country as well.
Much more clear-sighted than all of us, the brigade has already started preparing for a life without Ian Khama.
On account of what they have hatched in the circus that passed for primary elections, by a stroke of genius, the brigade has fast-tracked the President’s lame duck period and brought it forward much quicker than all of us would ever have imagined.
The current collapse of discipline is a result of intermittent cajoling for Khama’s replacement.
The Maun brigade is wholly responsible for phony losses suffered by such people like Ndelu Seretse; a fate that almost swallowed Pelonomi Venson and Tshekedi Khama.
Interestingly the brigade is working with those that we had thought they had retired from politics.
Already the primary results have ushered what by all accounts amounts to a cabinet reshuffle; only it has been effected without the President’s approval.
It does not matter to the brigade if in attaining their ambitions, along the way the party loses touch with political mainstream as shown by the results of the primaries last week.
The next target on their sight is Mokgweetsi Masisi who because they figure is a much bigger and more portent threat to their evil ambitions will have his fall inevitably celebrated most and loudest.
In a big way the Maun brigade is targeting those people viewed as key contenders in the succession race. The strategy is to take away President Khama’s options thereby deliberately weakening him, while forcefully installing themselves as the only remaining heirs to the throne.
We must never forget how we reached here. The President signed his own death warrant when he extended a totally undeserved political lifeline to this brigade at Maun.
He openly campaigned for some of them by creating a subtle but very emblematic public impression that the fount of future power patronage of the BDP would henceforth be with this club of thugs.
With chickens coming home to roost, he finds himself now having to pay the price as the very people who he sponsored only a while ago are now baying for his blood.
As the English would say, there is no honour in crime.
If this is not a coup, then I don’t know what is.
It’s an irony of sorts that somehow the president has had a hand in facilitating his own ouster.
