Parks Tafa has been a very busy man over the last few weeks.
And the kind of work that has kept him busy has nothing to do with the legal practice that has made him an immensely successful man that he is.
Rather it has all to do with the Botswana Democratic Party.
The BDP is due to hold internal primary elections. And things are not shaping up.
As Chairman of the BDP Electoral Board, Tafa would have been the first to see from inside that the primary elections are not going to be a smooth sail.
Not only are they a logistical nightmare, they also are fraught with many risks.
Any slight mistake and the entire edifice will come down crumbling.
It has been a delicate balancing act; balancing entrenched interests of party masters while also trying to withhold a semblance of fairness to those counting themselves as outsiders.
The stakes have never been higher. And it has not been easy.
To say the whole undertaking has been a logistical nightmare would be to underestimate the amount of internal strife that has characterized the inner workings leading to the primaries scheduled for next week; unless the Central Committee, not for the first time re-constitutes the party’s calendar year.
Twice before, during the early days of preparations, Tafa and his Board had to contend with public pronouncements by a Central Committee that effectively overruled the Electoral Board.
One such instance had to do with the deadline for applications. Tafa and his Board had publicly set a deadline that threatened to disenfranchise the interests of some key individuals that wanted to become BDP candidates.
Many of them were people still serving in the public service with strong credential to make it to cabinet next year should they win.
After direct representations to the President for intervention, the Central Committee ruled against Tafa and his Electoral Board.
For a man of his immense pride, image awareness and singular sensitivity, that might have been demeaning enough for Tafa.
Inside the BDP, Tafa is the acme of authority.
Of all individuals with a round the clock access to President Ian Khama (and they are few), Tafa is a rare breed with a thorough mind of intellect and strategy as some of his defining attributes.
This has made him so powerful that many in government refer to him as the defacto Attorney General.
“Inside the BDP, Parks is a force of nature. He really is in power,” a BDP member recently confided.
What is however not said is that primary elections that Tafa is tasked with organizing are by all accounts a poisoned chalice.
If anything goes wrong, it will go horribly wrong. And he will be the one to carry the can. He will pay the price for all that goes wrong.
And already signs of cracks are beginning to emerge.
Twice in as many weeks he has released statements the subtext of which is that the BDP may be drowning under the water as it tries to scale the mammoth task of preparing for primary elections.
In his latest statement he reminds party members that the Central Committee is due to meet on Monday to review progress made thus far.
“Should anything change in the Primary Election Programme as previously notified to you, such change(s) shall be communicated to democrats as soon as possible.”
It is a statement loaded with deliberate legal drafting ambiguity, which our opposition parties should however still be able to decipher.
All it means is that nothing has been cast in stone; anything remains possible. It may all go haywire.
And then there is that other component of primaries for which Tafa cannot fairly be held accountable, but which is ultimately as important nonetheless.
Some of President Khama’s blue-eyed boys are facing defeat with their eyes wide open.
These include Ndelu Seretse, Tshekedi Khama and to a lesser extent Dorcas Malesu; all of them senior ministers and two of them blood relatives ÔÇô one a brother and the other a first cousin.
Seretse and Tshekedi, it might be added are intricately linked to Khama’s long term plans and with that political survival and succession.
If the duo loses primaries as it looks likely, the seismic impacts will go beyond just the BDP.
Even those of us who have never attended a BDP cell meeting will be made to pay the price.
Things however may not be as bad for Malesu. She can be sacrificed and still have life go on as usual for all of us.
Internal dynamics as brought by BDP primaries provide a boon for opposition parties.
For all the semblances of serenity, things are not what they seem.
We must never forget how we all reached this point.
President Khama’s heartstrings on the ruling party may be stronger than ever. But he no longer makes weather.
Following the party split, many inside the BDP, longer holds him in the same reverence like they used to.
Of course he is still loved. But he is in the same vein hated with the same ferocity.
Those members of the BDP who will feel hard-done in the primaries will no doubt want to put the spanner in the works.
A great British politician, Enoch Powell once said that all political careers end up in failure.
President Khama should take heed to this statement as he sits atop a Central Committee table that will make a final decision on BDP primaries on Monday.
