Julius Malema says Botswana is run by a puppet regime that is under the thrall of the West, the United States to be more precise.
The leader of the ANC youth league goes on to say not only is such a Botswana a security threat to the rest of Africa, but also that the people of Botswana have to be assisted to elect a pan-Africanist government that promotes the African agenda.
If he is to be believed, his youth league has already established what he calls the Botswana command team ostensibly to work with Botswana opposition to topple the BDP.
Already, the Botswana collective opposition is falling on themselves to embrace their gift from Malema.
So happy are our opposition activists that they remind me of the look on my son’s face every time I buy him a new toy.
Our opposition should tread with care.
Malema’s is not altogether a new thought, nor is it entirely wrong. But it is terribly condescending, arrogant and patronizing coming from a foreign national.
Is it any wonder that in search of Malema’s true motives some critics are already impugning his new found interest in Botswana while he has enough problems back home?
Some people already suspect Malema is stirring trouble in Botswana as a way of diverting attention from his troubles in South Africa, which by me is not altogether impossible.
After forty years of independence, do Batswana still need a South African young man in his twenties to tell them what government is good for them?
It was wrong, in fact, irresponsible for the unprovoked President Ian Khama to have attacked Malema at a BDP rally, especially since up until then, save to come to Botswana at the invitation of Khama’s BDP, Malema had not shown not even a passing interest in Botswana’s internal affairs.
But for Malema to retaliate in the manner that he did has been most extraordinary and unprecedented.
Not only has he crossed the line on the sand, he has also broken many of the known diplomatic etiquette.
But we should have seen it coming. The Botswana that we live in today is an isolated country. If we are not careful we soon will be a pariah state too.
But then that is a whole topic for another day.
The problem that Botswana and its ruling party face is not so much dissimilar to that afflicting South Africa and Malema’s African National Congress.
Botswana Government and the BDP are under a thrall of commission agents.
Astonishingly, these commission agents refer to themselves as businessmen.
Curiously, even as Malema and Khama feign to be enemies, they are, at least from reports, united in support of commission agents ransacking their respective countries.
In Botswana President Ian Khama seems totally helpless against the commission agents.
In South Africa Malema is a senior member of the gang.
A closer look at these agents reveals that they actually are not businessmen for they have no businesses under their management.
Instead, they are peddling their influence to milk commissions from international companies that win big contracts from government.
In most instances, these companies happen to be Chinese owned ÔÇô but a significant amount of them are American and European, raking billion worth of contracts from the Botswana Defence Force.
Because these commission agents have direct access to the President and because he prefers them over elected representatives of both party and parliament, it is a given that it is as a result of them that Khama’s credibility will ultimately go to the dogs.
The sooner Khama disassociates from commission agents the greater will his moral standing as a politician grow.
Khama’s preference and attachment to this cartel over people’s representatives is perhaps the biggest signal yet just how detached our president is from reality.
From his attachment to these sharks, Khama comes out at best as grossly misinformed and at worst just outright misguided and aloof.
His love for commission agents will ultimately render his presidency doomed.
But who exactly are these commission agents?
These are people who profess to be BDP, yet cannot for a day want to be seen to be doing the political dirty work of campaigning in the countryside.
These are people who claim to be BDP but are totally unprepared to share their ill-gotten loot with the party
It cannot be claimed to be unknown to the President that agents’ workshop entails promising the Chinese contractors that by teaming up with them they are guaranteed to win big government projects.
The key word is political connection ÔÇô in first name basis with so and so, including the president, the vice president and such others of their henchmen.
Commission agents are the people who drive the BDP deeper and deeper into the brink of an identity crisis.
Is it now a party for new money or does it remain a broad church that it used to be?
Never before has a party with such a rich history of popularity been hijacked as to be controlled by so few and so unaccountable.
Will these people stick to a BDP that is out of power? Will they use the spoils they are so aggressively accumulating to one day help an out of power BDP back into power? I doubt very much.
Somebody more uncharitable has called them political tourists ÔÇô baggage would have been more like it.
My view of commission agents is that they are a wrong answer to a wrong question.
They serve to divide and contaminate the ruling party with the pervasive envy and hatred that they invoke among the general membership.
They turnoff too many of the party’s foot soldiers by their preparedness not only to show off their wealth but also to dangle their closeness to the President.
Malema’s South Africa faces a similar problem, but in Botswana they may yet prove to be Khama’s downfall, unless the President detaches himself from their ways.
