There is a big political wind sweeping across the country.
Ian Khama is taking full and uncontested control of Botswana’s opposition politics.
He will become such a towing figure of Botswana’s opposition politics.
He is not seeking power for himself personally, but rather to remove president Mokgweetsi Masisi.
In the end, if that happens Khama will be the single most powerful, unelected and unaccountable individual.
This is because Ian Khama is hardworking, disciplined and organized.
He is even showing some positive traits he failed to do while he was in power.
Since joining the opposition ranks, he has been focused, on message, self-effacing and ridiculously diffident.
And because more people are getting really fed-up with the governing party, Ian Khama has become a natural default fallback position.
There will be some faces in office. But those people will not be in power. Power will reside elsewhere.
No big decision will be done without those in office deferring to the man in charge – Ian Khama.
When and if Khama leads the opposition into power, there will invariably be some political parties that will wake up to realise really that they have lost out even as the motley crew will overall have made significant political gains.
There is no prize for guessing who the biggest loser is going to be.
That political outfit will be the Botswana National Front.
The reason why the BNF president has to be pushed to call any meetings – at both the Umbrella for Democratic Change and also the Botswana National Front is because he does not like to account.
He likes things to move on their own with no collective decisions taken.
Even in a crisis his natural instinct is to leave things to fester on, usually hoping they will go out of public imagination or somehow resolve themselves.
For a politician who craves state power the way he does, this is not only surprising but also worrying.
There is need for more legroom at the Umbrella for Democratic Change.
The goal should never be to put up appearances. But rather to democratize.
Quite predictably, the BNF is behaving like an anointed one.
Since its inception, the UDC has never held elections. It looks like the BNF want it to continue like that.
For some reason the BNF views holding of elections as a threat.
Some in the party leadership manifestly repudiate all calls for elections inside the UDC, which by itself is really embarrassing.
As a political strategy, postponing elections is totally untenable.
BNF’s power over the years has been waning.
The party’s trajectory is now at the mercy of the insulting power of the attack dogs within its ranks that have largely held the party hostage and also assured Duma Boko’s continued stay as the leader.
Right now the same group is insulting, disrupting and destabilizing Price Dibeela.
Dibeela’s biggest crime has been to want to replace Boko as BNF leader.
This group’s vulgarity and disruptive tendencies have not been limited to the BNF.
They have extended those tendencies to the UDC where other alliance members, chiefly Dumelang Saleshando of the Botswana Congress Party has been subjected to endless abuse.
It is instructive that Boko has not intervened.
He uses this thuggish crew as kite-fliers.
Boko built his reputation on the back of a strong promise to take the UDC into state power.
He has failed to do that on two consecutive occasions.
In the meantime, the BNF today is much weaker than was the case when the UDC was formed.
The BNF and its leadership would do themselves a great favour by rebuilding the party structures that have now become totally dysfunctional.
There is a shocking lack of strategic thinking at leadership level to strengthen and develop both the UDC and the BNF. More time is wasted fighting petty battles and trying to be a step ahead of a rival.
It is tactics, tactics and more tactics.
And that distracts everybody from a long-term goal of seeing a bigger picture.
This mindset is further fueled by a feeling among some in the BNF leadership that last year’s General Elections were rigged. The party has been unable to move on from that loss.
Batswana should be worried that a party that wants state power is led by a person who eschews inner party elections.
What if once elected they moved towards transplanting their inner style of no-elections-party democracy to national level.
Most recently, there has been a rancorous and very public struggle between the BNF and the BCP.
The BCP, to their credit tried to stay clean in their arguments while the BNF descended down the tube, using the same thuggish language and tactics deployed against Prince Dibeela.
BNF is currently on the wrong side of history.
Their argument to hold off elections in perpetuity is a non-starter especially for a political party that prides itself as a traditional guarantor of civil liberties.
The unspoken word is that the BNF will never want to be a junior partner to an offspring it sired, the Botswana Congress Party.
However that might be, for now, BNF continuing with UDC leadership unelected and into the next general elections looks a pretty unaffordable undertaking.
There comes a time when the pretense becomes not only unsustainable but also an embarrassment.
Botswana National Front has spent the last few years, not consolidating its power inside the UDC and certainly not organizing UDC to become more appealing.
Organisationally, the BNF is by far weaker than when Boko found it.
The party lives on nostalgia and is beholden to a few rabble-rousers that do not want a courteous internal debate.
Nothing better highlights the dearth of accountability inside the BNF than the current petitioners’ debacle. Many of them signed off sureties under an impression that a South African billionaire was going to bankroll their legal case.
Now many of them will see their lives ruined by such untruthfulness.
As it is the petitioners have been left to hang by own petard.
That is not the only thing that needs to be cleared.
The money that was raided following Gomolemo Motswaledi’s death has to be accounted for.
The money that was raised following last year’s election to help pay the legal bill has to be accounted for.
And there was also money raised using cellphone messages that the public, not just BNF members are still to know what it was used for.
Based on the outcome of last year’s General Elections – since questioned by UDC leader Duma Boko and given a green light by his deputy, Dumelang Saleshando, it is absolutely clear that BCP went into those elections better organized.
BCP continues to hold regular central committee meetings.
Mountains have to be moved for the BNF to hold just one such meeting.
BNF has a very rich history.
But has become a victim of that history.
They believe that they still command the kind of respect they did when Kenneth Koma was the leader.
What the party is unable to grasp is that demographic and political realities have been moving further and further from them.
They also need to reclaim their party from the noisy thugs currently calling the shots in it who are a turn-off from more descent people the party needs to grow.
They need to start working at listening to non-BNF members more.
Listening to the converted creates an echo chamber and no dynamism.
