It has taken a while for the Botswana National Front to accept and finally come to terms with the painful truth that its affair with South Africa’s African National Congress has come to an end. The ANC has a new lover, the Botswana Democratic Party. And as anybody who has been in love before will attest, new love is exhilarating. The love birds have thrown out all caution through the window. They are behaving like teenagers. All that the BNF can do is stop brooding and move on. By the way, for the BNF this is not a joking matter. And moving on is easier said than done. The much advertised BDP/ANC love affair weighs in very heavily on the BNF’s ability to think clearly and coherently. And it shows. More than all of the party’s previous splits ÔÇô and there have been quite a few ÔÇô this love affair is testing BNF’s resilience in an unprecedented way. Yet still BNF’s response to ANC new found love with the BDP is a textbook primer of how not to respond to rejection. In trying to prove that it was afterall not so badly hurt the BNF has unintentionally achieved the exact opposite. The BNF has been literally running after the ANC, begging and pleading for what as young teenagers we used to call back love. This has had the effect of inflaming the BDP/ANC affair.
The BNF gives an impression of a rejected lover who does not only lack self confidence, but also identity. It all shows in the way they cannot stop wincing every time they see an ANC entourage arriving in town ÔÇô not to meet with likeminded socialists ÔÇô but to enjoy wine with the right of centre BDP. From their behavior it’s clear the BNF still cannot imagine a life without the ANC as its lover. Rightly so, the BNF is bitter. It feels slighted and is so plainly heartbroken ÔÇô as any jilted lover would. Probably half drunk from red wine, the ANC Secretary General, Gwede Mantashe, says the BNF behaves as though his party is involved in some kind of a polygamous marriage. As he so often is, Mantashe is on this instance wrong, outright disingenuous, rude and even insulting. What the ANC has done to BNF amounts to betrayal. The ANC is engaged in something worse than polygamy. By jumping onto the same bed and consorting with the BDP before formally divorcing the BNF, the ANC’s behavior is obscenely adulterous.
That the ANC and Mantashe in particular sees no shame in this goes a long way to show how far to the right yesteryear leftists have moved over the last decade or two. The party, or at least the leadership is involved in an unholy trinity of opportunism, hedonism and cheating. If the ANC had its way, it would have kept both the BDP and the BNF. But the mutual jealousy of the BDP and BNF against each other has made that kind of love triangle impossible, in the way forcing the ANC to make a choice. Under the circumstances it is BDP that has emerged the winner. But still the biggest fault is BNF’s. Botswana is a country with such a high divorce and it surprises us when BNF behaves as though it is from another planet when it served with divorce papers.
Optimists inside the BNF continue to say their party has not yet been divorced, at least not absolutely. Not only are they in denial, like everybody else they are in a bind. They do not know what to call what little is left of their relations with the ANC relations. With the ANC over the moon with the BDP, is the BNF in or out? Nobody seems to know. And it hurts awfully. While publicly saying things that are mean, ill-spirited and even demeaning about the BNF, the ANC is also careful to leave open the door so that should circumstances change, the path to back love, which the BNF so much craves will not be hard to go through. What the ANC has done to the BNF is evil. But we must forever thank the ANC for exposing the emotional vulnerabilities of both the BDP and the BNF. The BNF’s biggest mistake has been to attach too much sentimentality in its relationship with the ANC.
In all fairness, today’s ANC is more suitable to the BDP than to the BNF. For the ANC, as is the case with today’s BDP, the value of everything is measured on hard currency of expediency. Thus every relationship is more transactional and less romantic. But to say the BDP is a liberation movement, as implied by the BDP Secretary General Botsalo Ntuane is to go overboard. It is not only twisting historical facts, it amounts to a self-righteous afterglow. That by the way is how the whole of the BDP feels todayÔÇô from the president down to a faceless activist – after beating the BNF to get the undivided attention of the ANC. For the BDP, caution is advisable. By any measure, Mantashe’s rabblerousing attitude is antithetical to any stable and enduring relationship. He is through and through a short-termist.
Those who follow South African politics would also know that he is nothing if not an untrustworthy political partner. For him partners come and go. As it has happened to the BNF, so too will one day happen to the BDP. Julius Malema would attest to this. The BNF is better advised that for now there is really not much that the BDP is gaining from the ANC. If anything it is the ANC officials that frequent Botswana that gain. Every time they visit Botswana they get the best of both worlds ÔÇô during the day they get official meetings with senior officials, including the Head of State. And in the evening they are entertained by the finest girls carefully picked for them by the host party. These are for now out of reach luxuries that an out of power BNF, whatever their pretentions can ill-afford.
