Covid-19 offered a huge opportunity for Botswana government and especially for president Mokgweetsi Masisi to demonstrate strong and compassionate leadership.
Yet it has now been two years of chaos.
All the president needed to do was to manage the pandemic, communicate effectively and honestly and he would emerge from it smelling roses.
All Batswana ever needed to see was their president holding firm in time of a crisis.
But before he could do any of those, the president first needed to admit that these were not normal times.
And that he could not continue as if everything was normal.
He needed to show boldness.
That did not happen.
Some people tend to confuse boldness with grandeur. There is a difference between the two.
They needed a reassurance from the sitting president especially in the wake of a former president saying he had made a mistake by choosing Masisi as a successor.
He needed to show what he is capable of doing, especially when working under pressure.
True leadership, they say is shown not when everything is going well but during the most trying times.
While Covid is far from over, it can now be said with a measure of confidence that Botswana government and indeed president Masisi have failed the test the pandemic had offered them.
With failing that test the president has also squandered what goodwill and indeed benefit of doubt that the public was always willing to extend them.
It is very unlikely that the voter will be forgiving when they are called next time to issue a verdict.
The opposition is right in sensing some opportunity. But they should not get ahead of themselves.
People are hurting. And they might be turned off by what they perceive to be un-measured political opportunism.
It would seem like everything that could go wrong has gone badly wrong – from PPE procurement all the way to vaccine roll-out.
On vaccine procurement, Botswana government never had much chance chiefly because of cynical hoarding by the west.
But even allowing for a measure of charitable gesture, Botswana government’s procurement of the vaccine has been unmitigated fiasco. And worse, totally lacking in honesty, transparency and one might add, seriousness.
In the end everything has become a big mess – almost predictably so.
From the beginning many inside Botswana Government did not fully appreciate the gravity and indeed destruction, economic ruin, pain, human catastrophe, misery and mayhem Covid could cause.
Outside government there were even companies that toyed with the idea of sponsoring prizes – apparently to the winners or heroes as it were – basically turning covid into a checkbook campaign.
If there is anything for which we could thank Covid-19 it has to be the extent to which it has exposed the institutionalized inadequacies inside government, including and especially at the Office of the President.
Office holders have been left looking like a group of trainees.
Institutions designed to work in times of a crisis have been found too wobbly to stand.
Government handling of the Covid emergency has been nothing short of a disaster.
On Friday I listened to the Minister of Health and Wellness and I could not help but shed a tear for the man.
He is trying hard. But the system is failing him. He neither has the power nor public trust.
The power is with the president. The public have long withdrawn faith in government officials.
Unless may be the public aimed too high and thus set the bar way above what was practically possible?
We should do everything possible to learn from the tragedy that Covid has all has become.
Covid management by government has eroded what little confidence the voter had still had in politics, in government and in politicians.
Restoring that trust will not be easy, not least because for too many people Covid has been a life and death matter.
There is something inherently flawed with a system that centralizes all the power in one office and on one person.
If that office collapses under pressure it brings down with it the entire edifice.
We are all implored to play our part, yet almost all the constitutional powers are with the president.
We are like toys.
In Botswana all practical evidence shows that parliament like the judiciary are mere appendages that draw their very being from being docile to the executive.
And executive is nothing but euphemism for president.
Democratic institutions without the generosity of a president exist only in name. And Covid has proved that. If ever there was any need for proof.
Trade Unions are struggling for direction.
The media is on its knees – literally.
And the opposition is at each other’s throat.
The ruling party is itself incapable of holding the president accountable because inner party democracy has long died.
NGOs and other forms of civic society have been voluntarily roped in by the executive.
Truth telling should be a cardinal rule of public communication in a crisis.
It has taken the ire of Covid for the Masisi-led government to appreciate the elementary principle of truth telling.
Covid is not a side issue.
It is a core issue involving everybody.
Worse, Covid is a pandemic and a crisis. To manage it well, we need the best people in positions that matter to inspire confidence.
More importantly, those being advised – and this includes the president – should be prepared to listen to people who give advice.
Cabinet should include people who have enough authority with the president to tell him when things are not going well. Otherwise we get a president who is happy to be listening to own voice.
Right now it looks like the COVAX vaccines that people were made would be coming, will after all not be coming.
This is an affront at various levels.
It undermines public trust on government. And it also undermines government standing on the eyes of international development partners.
Covid was supposed to unleash the big beasts from deep inside the bellies of our cabinet.
Each of the ministers was supposed to shine, instead a presidential task force hogged all the power and limelight yet at crunch time it did not have the slightest idea what do with that power.
Roping in professor Mosepele Mosepele as the president’s personal physician was a rash decision – for Professor Mosepele, but also for the president.
Mosepele is supposed to be the Deputy Chairman of the Covid Task Force that advises the president. Talk of flying too close to the sun.
It kind of blurred the lines of responsibility. And exposed Mosepele to political persecution and charges of unethical conduct that we are seeing play out now. Both Mosepele and the president should have foreseen this.
In the absence of the Office of Government Ethics, we are all at the president’s mercy.
Backbenchers too had a big role to hold cabinet accountable.
They chose to become cheerleaders.
So covid provided each of us with a role to play, but somehow cabinet (the president) did not want to share the glory.
From the beginning the media was left out as part of the essential services, only to be added as an afterthought when questions were asked and some people felt embarrassed.
With covid related deaths on the ascendance and having claimed numbers that have left all of sus shocked, there is too much hand-wringing going on from the leadership.
President Mokgweetsi Masisi was last week the first to throw the salvo.
COVAX, said president, has cheated Botswana.
We placed orders. We have paid. And they have not delivered, he added.
The public does not know where lies the truth. But for them believing the president has become a risk they are not prepared to take.
There is now talk of introducing the position of Chief of Staff in the presidency.
We are yet to fully understand what his position will be vis-à-vis to that of the Permanent Secretary to the president.
And exactly what will be their role vis-à-vis cabinet ministers many of who now feel disempowered and even publicly belittled by an increasingly short-fused president.
If, as we hear their primary role is to connect the ruling party with government, then may be that would be worthwhile undertaking given how far away government has wandered from its electoral pledges and commitments.
Did we put too much trust in the hands of princes?
Covid has made it look more like it.
