As a season characterized by a search for scapegoats finally comes to an end inside the UDC so does begin that of facing up to hard realities.
After full scale, multi-faceted, multi-pronged attempts to render it a stillborn, the Alliance for Progressives has been formed.
Unable to stop the birth of Alliance for Progressives, the UDC turned to mounting querulous attacks on some sections of the media – a well travelled beaten path that in the end proved a misplaced proposition as it was a losing one.
When that too failed to yield results, attention turned to adopting legal sophistry as a tool to confuse the public.
When that too failed, false alibis were created to provide imagined accounts and narratives why the AP was formed.
That propaganda too has been proven to be counterproductive and ineffective as a political strategy.
With time have now come the unvarnished realities.
For all its defects and toxic baggage, the Botswana Movement for Democracy has to be accepted inside the UDC.
UDC reluctance to face up to its own difficulties is dangerous for the party.
In fact such denials are nothing short of an existential threat because they prevent the party from moving on.
Such denials are behind the ongoing pattern of confusion among even the most fanatical UDC adherents.
Such denials are also behind the uncivilized attitudes of some of its leadership towards the AP.
If not halted, that pattern of denials will ultimately render it impossible for any future prospects of UDC working or collaborating with the AP.
Profoundly, those denials are behind an emerging pattern of victimhood among the UDC.
By far the most disturbing development at UDC has been a refusal among some in its leadership to accept Botswana Movement for Democracy and its leader, Sydney Pilane as bonafide members.
After the departure of Ndaba Gaolathe and his followers to start the AP, there really is no valid reason to put the BMD out of the UDC.
As Pilane himself so rightly put it, those who do not want the BMD inside the UDC are free to leave.
Nothing is more emblematic of UDC sense of victimhood than ongoing false narrative that Ndaba Gaolathe and his followers were always a problem for UDC growth.
Not only are those narrations hollow, they also are disingenuous.
Even if they were true, the reality now is that Gaolathe has left, and the UDC should face the world without him.
As things stand, harping on the formation of AP and what effects Gaolathe had on UDC is nothing more than an excuse not to come to terms with the past.
UDC needs to stop dredging on its imaginary old enemies and get its act together.
That has to start by welcoming Pilane as its first Vice President.
UDC has two Constitutions. That has provided cover and convenience among some at leadership to quote, use and deploy the two interchangeably.
That two has to stop.
Without any attempt to conceal their chicanery, some UDC leaders have resorted to use of the two constitutions interchangeably, depending on which one suits them at any given time.
For example, when they clandestinely accepted BCP they cited the new Constitution.
Yet when they want to deny Sidney Pilane automatic membership, including his first Vice President position, they want to resort to the old Constitution, under which the BCP is explicitly not a member.
That brazen dishonesty at UDC leadership has become a thick cloud hindering and impending all that the party so plainly seeks and intends to do.
In the meantime the party has reached a cul-de-sac, a result of growing behavior among leaders not to come to terms with the past, including formation of AP.
Accepting AP will lead to closure and facilitate a much needed process of moving on.
UDC was from the beginning a creation not of any one individual, but rather a result of innate public momentum who was a manifestation of yearning for change.
By any other name, that momentum could still have happened.
All it needed was good leadership. That never came along.
In the end, what was once dubbed the people’s project fell victim to what has been a painfully familiar kind of malignant leadership.
UDC is no longer a bastion of calm that it was leading into the 2014 General Elections.
Public trust in the party leadership is at gravest deficit.
The fervent calls on the public by some in UDC leadership to shun and punish AP is ridiculously simplistic.
It is a sign of misplaced victim mentality.
Just why does UDC feel hard-done-by?
AP did not voluntarily decide to leave the UDC but was left with no alternatives after circumstances, part of them a result of UDC conniving against Gaolathe and his followers.
In the whole scheme of things, it is Gaolathe and AP that should feel aggrieved.
If they want to create an impact, AP should not waste time wailing in victimhood.
They should instead fight for political space, strive for relevance and establish themselves as a bonafide political entity.
Leading into 2014, UDC was more important because the party was by far bigger than the total sum of individual parties that made it.
That is no longer the case.
After AP, saving the UDC will become even more difficult because its leaders, goaded by a few gangs that dominate especially the Botswana National Front do not want to strive to regain and retain the favour of the public in a civilized way.
The sooner UDC accepts the self-destructive consequences of dwelling in the past, the better.
Otherwise the party should prepare itself for a diminished future role, and ultimate setting into oblivion.
