There is no question that a cabinet reshuffle was desirable, in fact so it was even long before Mompati Merafhe left the scene.
It was, however, always very clear to many of us, no less so to President Ian Khama that while desirable, any reshuffle would, in the main, prove unworkable.
The front bench is consumed with paralysis and inertia.
Many of our cabinet ministers have reached their intellectual ceilings.
And no matter how hard the president prods them, he will not get much out of them.
It is not that they are lazy. They just have simply expended all their potential capital.
And like the rest of us, ministers too can only go so far.
The trouble, however, is that what little remains in the backbenches are Members of Parliament whose loyalty is suspect as they are, by and large, new comers, with some of them having newly arrived from decidedly hostile territory, especially the Botswana Movement for Democracy.
Appointing them into cabinet so soon after rejoining the BDP could prove problematic.
It could, among other things, send wrong signals that disloyalty always gets rewarded, one way or another. And that could unsheathe divisions which President Ian Khama has so ruthlessly fought to bring to an end within his ruling Botswana Democratic Party.
When Merafhe left, President Khama had to confront the hard choice he had postponed for rather too long ÔÇô reshuffle the pack.
And on Wednesday he did just that. The beneficiary was Tshekedi Khama, the president’s younger brother.
The nation is gravely split, not so much on whether the cabinet reshuffle, so called, would add value but rather on how shameless Ian Khama is to have added his younger brother to the cabinet table.
What is not disputable, and for that we should thank him,  is that by appointing his younger brother into cabinet, president Khama is actually doing this country a greater favour.
He is forcing all of us to get a real appreciation of a kind of man that he is.
President Khama knows very well that the public mood is totally against adding yet another Khama into cabinet but, as in his other past actions, he has elected to discount public opinion and instead resort to agnostic legalisms.
A legalistic, executive-minded president,  Khama is overly conscious that on this one, as in his many other past diabolic actions, he is on the side of the law. And that is all that matters to him.
It was only a matter of time before Tshekedi Khama ascended. In fact, it took much longer than the elder brother would have liked.
We should trace the history of how the younger Khama first made it into parliament ÔÇô it was against all odds.
Gomolemo Motswaledi, a rising star within the BDP as he then was, had long made his interest clear to replace Ian Khama when the latter ascended to the presidency.
But the Khamas had other ideas.
It had to be one of them replacing the other.
Blood, they say, is thicker than water.
Whatever opinion one chooses to take with them from this reshuffle, it is almost impossible for President Khama to emerge from it with any high moral acclaim.
He likes to count himself among the most patriotic Batswana that ever lived. In no small measure, such misconception stems from his vestigial lineage. He is the son of a founding president, an independence hero who played an amazing role crafting the foundations at the heart of what makes this country a great nation.
But Ian Khama is not Seretse Khama. The differences between father and son are there for all to see.
The disjunction that exists between the son’s pronouncements and what he practices makes him one of the most untrustworthy presidents this country has known.
What Khama is now doing is to abuse his defeat over all political opponents in the country ÔÇô from inside his party, but also at opposition.
He comes across as someone who refuses to show mercy to people who are at his mercy.
Magnanimity, it seems, is a word that does not form a part of his vocabulary.
Other than that, his younger brother has been so brashly favoured (and dishonourably so from the opposition point of view) over many other people, there is also an element that, on the balance, the reshuffle will not result in any value-add at the cabinet table, much less in efficiency or productivity in the broader government apparatus.
Other than to further consolidate his power and safeguard the family business interests, Khama’s┬áreshuffle will not achieve much else.
The trouble is that, as a country, perhaps as part of misplaced vestigial conceptions of nationalism and patriotism that we continue to gullibly suckle from President Khama, we┬á insist that we are the world’s foremost democracy, which we certainly are not. Compared to many African countries, like Zimbabwe, we certainly are doing very well but if we cannot wake up to many hard truths of our several┬á shortcomings when it comes to governance we will soon cease to compare better even against such pariah states.
Kitso Mokaila, who Tshekedi Khama replaces as minister responsible for tourism is through and through a family retainer, who was accepted as an effective minister even as it was widely known that his primary task, first and foremost, was to protect the Khama interests in such tourism outfits like the Wilderness Safaris. With the arrival of Tshekedi that job falls right inside the family, while Mokaila will take care of the family’s new interests in the diamond industry.
With all those in mind, just what more is left to happen before we can all believe that, as a country, we are well on our way to where most other African countries have always been: a failed state?
