The ongoing negotiations between the Umbrella for Democratic Change on one side and the Botswana Congress Party on the other have all the hallmarks of Angola during a decades-long civil war that pitted the Marxist inclined MPLA led by Eduardo Dos Santos against the western and apartheid South Africa backed Unita led by Jonas Savimbi.
The intermittent negotiations between these two were always a senseless cycle of ever-shifting goal posts, tenacious back-stabbing, endless bad faith and crude lack of trust for one another.
Each felt it had the legitimate right to rule Angola ÔÇô the MPLA because it was always winning elections whenever they were called, and Savimbi’s Unita because somehow they felt that being a surrogate of the United States they were the true repository of democratic attributes that Angola so badly lacked.
Savimbi knew so well that MPLA and Dos Santos had grown war fatigued and would stop at nothing to get peace. A thoroughgoing bully, he maximized on this to beyond a breaking point.
Every time he felt buffeted at the battlefield, he would persuade his masters in Washington and Pretoria to insist on a ceasefire and for elections to be held. And even before elections were held would announce that he would not accept any results that did not make him the winner.
Lo and behold, elections would be. And over and over again he would lose those elections.
And over and over again he would reject the results.
After losing at the polls he would demand some power sharing arrangement, always invariably with himself as one of two or more Vice Presidents.
When that demand too was granted, he would come up with yet another new excuse that made it difficult as to be impossible for him to become a part of a unity government in Luanda.
More often than not he would refuse to come out of his headquarters in the forests of Jamba and take the position at the capital saying he feared for his life because he could not trust MPLA bodyguards.
When his security was guaranteed by the United Nations he would go back to his initial demand for fresh elections.
In the meantime he would be gaining some breathing space which he would soon enough expend in the rekindling of fresh bloodletting through war.
And so the cycle of going around the mulberry bush would start all over again.
Things only came to an end when Savimbi was killed by MPLA soldiers in the bush near his self-styled headquarters and peace came back to Angola. By that time his western backers had long deserted him.
In our instance, the BCP pulled out of negotiations that around 2012 went on to spawn the existence of the UDC.
They somehow reckoned they would perform better alone.
It was a hideous misinterpretation of the public mood as in the 2014 General elections they could only get three constituencies ÔÇô or thereabout with the UDC getting twenty. For a party of intellectual egomaniacs, this was a humbling experience.
Faced with possible extinction they crafted a way to crawl back to the UDC for rapprochement.
As it was the case with Savimbi, such rapprochement has with time proved a deceitful way to buy time.
At the negotiations, BCP we were told demanded not just the change of name for the UDC, but also a position of Vice President for themselves. This was over and above the seventeen constituencies they were given.
The more unpolished among them even had the audacity to demand the presidency of the UDC.
When it became clear that neither of their more atrocious demands would be given it was suggested that UDC should have at least two Vice Presidents ÔÇô aka Angola style during Savimbi’s mad days.
Savimbi knew that MPLA wanted peace ÔÇô at all cost.
For their part, the BCP has quite wisely interpreted that there are some in the UDC who so badly want state power that they would stop at nothing to get it. And that the path to power diminishes as to evaporate in the air without BCP involvement of some shade.
The BCP is capitalizing on this, cunningly, manipulating UDC leadership so as to get the most of the things that it could not get at the polls.
The UDC is better advised that the path to power is dependent more on hard work than on political tradeoffs that in the end amount to ticking the voter.
Additionally, the UDC should be careful not to reward the BCP at the expense of its trusted loyalists who have worked for its brand at a time when the future was bleak.
That would inevitably create divisions and instability. And possibly inspire internal revolt.
But more importantly, the UDC should not accept a change of name to accommodate a political party whose loyalty is at best tenuous and at worst outright nonexistent.
At least based on the immediate past elections, the UDC is a viable brand.
Changing it would not only be superfluous but silly.
Inside the UDC, the Botswana National Front is a linchpin just in the same way as it has over the years proved to be in the country’s general opposition politics.
BNF boasts some of the country’s hardnosed battled tested activists with many years spent in the trenches of turbulent rollercoaster opposition politics. These are the people who if things were done properly should be demanding that their party’s name be reflected in the motley crew that is the UDC.
The fact that such calls for change of UDC name are coming from the BCP is a hilarious insult to these BNF activists who have sacrificed so much in the form of identity of their organization.
More unsettling is that such calls, coming from the BCP are a stark reminder that the party has clearly not outgrown its past history of obsession with public relations at the expense of substantive reality.
That they can be entertained by some from the UDC, or better still the BNF leadership is a hilarious insult to the wisdom of ordinary members.
The MPLA and Dos Santos wanted peace for Angola, at all cost. UDC in Botswana wants state power, at all cost.
Despite several international attempts, Savimbi was in the end never a part of a peaceful Angola.
Will the BCP in the end be a part of a UDC in power?
The jury is still out.
