Not long ago a UDC hatchet man took offence at the reply I had made on Twitter. A journalist colleague had quite innocuously posted that Dumelang Saleshando should consider retiring as Botswana Congress Party leader because his contribution has been made. I replied that Saleshando was not the only one to retire. Now that was enough: “Why can’t you go and advise [Mokgweetsi] Masisi?” snapped our UDC man.
They have been on a pretty bad mood lately. To be honest things have not been going quite well for them. Many of them are having a short fuse. It is all self-inflicted. The fallout between the Botswana National Front and the Botswana Congress Party is taking a toll on either side. The only people smiling are the Botswana democratic Party. But only just! They have their own issues, internally. President Masisi has not enhanced democracy, including inner party democracy the way he had promised. His reply to every question coming his way is “covid.”
We can be sure that whatever happens, the UDC will get to the next general elections wounded, limping and not at its best. Elections can be very pretty testing. One needs to be at the very best to go through them. For an opposition party, winning an election is the most difficult thing. You are outside and you really have to show you can do better than the guy who is inside. In theory it looks so much easier when the incumbent is ham-fisted like is the situation today. Opposing Masisi will not be easy. Not only is he getting entrenched, he is also becoming many things to many people. He is a unique political operator with a rare skill to ride two horses at the same time.
That is a misfortune that Duma Boko will come to appreciate at the next General elections. It is also a reason why the UDC, especially in parliament are failing to make a mark. He says one thing and does the exact opposite. The contours of exactly what Masisi stands for are difficult to discern, thus making it extremely hard to pin him down among the electorate – especially so early in his presidency. To the elderly, especially in the rural areas he is a genuine and eloquent constitutionalist who means well but who has been unlucky to be washed away by covid.
These people want to give him a chance To the youth, especially in the urban areas he is a soft talking quack. To these people he is so evidently cunning that even listening to him is a serious risk. According to them he knows how to make promises that he never intends to keep. To this constituency he does not deserve to be president, let alone be given another shot at it. This is a constituency that would be so much easier for UDC to cultivate. The sad thing is that the UDC is in bigger trouble primarily because of the personal deficiencies of the two men at its helm; Boko because of his management style. And Saleshando because of his smouldering ambition.
Each man is a hopeless prisoner to his vice. For Boko and Saleshando to move forward with any chance of success in 2024, the duo has to accept that at the moment the UDC has a much slimmer chance than was the case in 2019. To be sure their bid which has not even started yet because there are internal businesses still outstanding is not inevitably doomed to fail. They might still cobble together a peace deal and announce a ceasefire. Palapye, curiously the same place where their forebearers famously and violently split is where the two are meeting to try and find one another. But because of their fraught relations, 2024 will feel like a totally different tournament.
The longer peace eludes them, the closer they get to a tipping point which will be a point of no return – for themselves, their parties and the electorate. The UDC leadership has to accept that the time when an electorate used to be patient enough to wait for them when they sorted out their petty differences is gone. And that time will not be coming back. Today’s voters demand political clarity and demonstrable seriousness. They seek to take a chance on people only on who can demonstrate even when out of power that they can be trusted with bigger responsibilities of state power.
Uniting so disparate parties as found in the UDC is a mammoth undertaking – even in normal times. There is no normal about the political era we are living through. There is a lot of incoherence, a lot of dishonesty and trust is in ever short supply. In times of such disunity, raising morale is never an easy feat. But there is no shortage of resolve to fight – neither from Boko nor Saleshando – each goaded on by followers who are themselves fueled by tribal partisanship. Each contracting party has naturally recoiled into its laager. The whole thing is no longer UDC.
It has been reduced to BNF versus BCP. Botswana Peoples Party, that little outfit that has a bigger name presence than numbers inside the UDC is at a distant corner cheering the BNF on. The level of belligerence is been shocking – especially to onlookers. All restraint has been thrown out through the window. The BCP leader is taking no prisoners. This week he was in a morning show on Duma FM. At exactly the same time, his deputy was at Gabz FM. There to mount what sounded like a coordinated onslaught. They were both fuming with righteous indignation. “We want to UDC to democratize,” they said in near unison. Saleshando and co. are shaping it along the lines of what the Americans call a culture war.
For him and his BCP the issues they are calling for inside the UDC are so elemental that they are non-negotiable. Boko, the only president the UDC has ever known in its ten-year history is not as combative – at least not in public. But there is no doubting that he wants his fate to be intricately linked to that of UDC. “Remove me and the whole UDC dies.” He has conveniently not ruled out expelling BCP from the UDC, his UDC. For many voters what they are seeing is a typical opposition set piece and will look frighteningly familiar.
It has the hallmarks of what happened in 2014 when the BCP chose not to be a part of the umbrella formation. At the moment Botswana needs a strong and united opposition. In the meantime the country faces multiple problems. And the ruling party has become unpredictable – some say untrustworthy. This country has never been more at the mercy of politicians.
