In the Sunday Standard online version, accessed on the 11th October 2009, The Watchdog, under the Opinion Analysis rubric, passionately pleads: “President Khama should dissolve the BDP ÔÇô he does not need it and nobody can challenge him”. Since the topic is catchy to the eyes, it invites paying attention to it and making a critical reading, and gleaning reading between its lines. And the nippy conclusion is this: The Watchdog regrets the nature of the Constitution of Botswana which has brought about the actual legality of the actions that a person serving as the president of the country can take – certainly! The Watchdog does not support the omnipotence of the president who is put above the law by the constitution – unquestionably! The Watchdog does not even support the existence of the BDP – evidently so!
Yet, in all these, the Watchdog is being wittingly acerbic, but also oddly instigating an action by the President that cannot be inconsequential for the president and the country. In the past few years we saw similar actions ÔÇô not dissolving a party, but a sitting president creating his own party because the party that brought him to power became vocal ÔÇô and that was Bingo wa Mutarika of Malawi!
We might have been waiting for 43 years for the moonlight, but maybe we have waited for darkness to come, and in this darkness we surely should need our Watchdog to bark and alert us. But to do justice to this state ofa affairs one must go to the basics of our Constitution and Laws, this time thinking them out of the 43 years box.
Here are some other details: the 1960 Lancaster House type of Constitutions are not the best in the world. Since 1966 there has been no serious re-think of any aspect of the Constitution and its laws. Yet, the Botswana society is demonstratively dynamic and its interaction with other societies requires that the society starts to make new demands ÔÇô starting from individual rights, to political rights, and up to new constitutional dispensations. The political stagnancy and the culture of the political establishment can certainly not serve Batswana to the best of their socio-political and democratic ideals.
On the democratic nature of the Botswana Constitution, one can only regret that all along, even all political parties have not systematically and critically considered the basic legal or democratic entailments of some of the Sections of the Constitution and Acts of our Laws. This is evident from some issues of the Sections 77, 78, and 79 of the Constitution that came up in the past, and which were “left-handedly” debated and resolved, but generally regarded as a piece of reactionary upheaval. One recollects then that some politicians even submitted that the Constitution had served us well and had assured us of stability, and insured against the tribalism ills of Africa.
Maybe. But these issues were myopically reduced to tribal issues across the political spectrum. However, the issues were and are still broader than the aforesaid Sections. In a social dynamic nation, issues are of course basically societal and political ÔÇô the idea that a nation makes of its value of democracy and who it serves. But there is a need to come to an impartial and altruistic realization that when a democracy matures, it does so not out of conservatism, but out of a continual engagement with new social, political, and economic challenges that citizens encounter in their daily experiences.
The Vision 2016, benefiting from a wider consultation of the nation and indeed from an objective comparisons with other countries socio-political benchmarks, seems also to have not incited any political formation to seriously consider its value and therefore its implementation. In spite of its illuminated vision, the Vision 2016 is fast becoming a vacuous dream, and six years to its fulfilment nothing has been achieved ÔÇô affirmably nothing in all critical areas of its pillars. One can take any of the Vision 2016 pillars and one can be certain that if those pillars will not be deadwoods in 2016, they will surely be derelicts similar to the wasted edifices of the ancient imperial Rome’s prosperity in power and in architecture.
Let one assume in passing some post-modernist issues regarding the rights of women, of children, of personal choices, of workers, and of all and sundry, and look at their representations in the Constitution, but one finds vague allusions. Nothing is specific to guarantee any democratic dispensation. Even courts are hamstrung by the nature of the Constitution and its laws. And to change things, it is not only the Section 41 that needs to be targeted, but the whole constitutional architecture and its legal entailment.
The question of the omnipotence of the president in the Constitution is an evident concern, but it is raised in a context that is not fair to the incumbent and definitely in circumstances that are not conducive to an impartial consideration of it, and therefore there is no possibility of coming up with a better determination of a achievable solution to it. The fact is that many constitutions in the world give the president the power to govern and to take that responsibility as the president. The solution to guarding against abuse of presidential powers have not come from directly targeting the provisions of such power, but by putting in place democratic and consultative institutions that require the president to seek advice and act democratically from institutional or legal processes.
The question of the BDP and its internal democracy has been put to a serious test by its recent political crisis, most patently. But BDP is not alone. Party constitutions in Botswana seem to have operated on a “good faith, well-meaning” basis and do not make the grade in any rigorous constitutionality assessment. Which party of any worth has had no such agonies with its leadership? Therefore it is not just BDP but all parties. And of course there is need to remedy these party constitutional frameworks. Parties ought to have in their constitutions powers and safeguards to steer those in the positions of leadership to a democratic consensus.
Until such is done, the political clamour that is made at this point in time in Botswana will only tarnish the country, as indeed, when one reads Botswana news journals from outside the country, and perhaps with some distance from some of these issues, Batswana hate their country when they hate their leaders.
The dissolution of BDP as party is therefore not a solution and at this point in time; and in this internal party context, it is of no import for Batswana.
*Chebane writes from Cape Town
