The Botswana National Front leader is discharging his mandate in an hounourable way.
The only thing we can hope for is that in the long term, the man demonstrates he has enough bouts of energy as to allow himself enduring depths of staying power.
Luckily for him, at least for now, he does not have too many internal distractions to waste time on.
The traditional anarchists have remained constructively loyal, a luxury that was ruthlessly denied his predecessor.
They have two choices: to rebel against Duma Boko and drive the party deeper and deeper into irrelevance and oblivion or to support him and restore the party back to its past glory ÔÇô or somewhere thereabout.
For now, save for a few shenanigans in the youth league, the BNF has remained united and is marching in step with both the BMD and the BCP. A victory for Boko, is a victory for all of the BNF.
It is also reassuring that, at least for now, the BNF intellectuals have suspended their emphasis of differences between their party and the BCP.
Perhaps most importantly they have also suspended their pastime hobby of villifying BMD as just an extension of the BDP. How long the moratorium holds, only the communists can say.
It was a mistake by BNF strategists to try to wish away BMD at the beginning.
Thankfully, and to their credit, some of BNF’s foremost strategists are beginning, though still grumbly, to embrace the fact that a BDP split has achieved a kind of irrepairable damage that could not be inflicted from outside.
That split was a gift from God.
The by-product of such a split, we must admit, was the formation of the BMD, which, from the look of things, is fast becoming a force of nature.
Although the jury is still out with regard to cooperation negotiations, it has not escaped the voters’ attention that all the major opposition parties are doing all in their power to work together and to respect one another’s right to exist. And that is all that was ever asked of them.
The good that has come out of the loose cooperation so far in place is that opposition parties are now able to compliment each.
While drawing on each other’s strengths they also are now able to minimise what has, in the past, proved to be counter-productive, self defeating and suicidal competition.
Especially at parliamentary level, the opposition tactics and strategies have never been more coherent and more detailed. And from the look of things, better days still lie ahead.
Duma Boko was not my choice for BNF leadership and I made that clear when the contest for BNF leadership was open. I was of the view that his aspirations were going to be divisive to the BNF, at least in the short to medium terms.
But even as I did not support Boko, I felt the decission by Olebile Gaborone to go back to the BDP after his loss against Boko only served to cheapen politics, especially coming from a man who once struck me as measured, graceful and principled.
Before Boko’s arrival, BNF had become hopelessly benighted.
A year into the top seat, there is every reason to believe the party is back on its knees.
Provided they do not once again get consumed by their wrong-headed big brother arrogance, the BNF can at least assure themselves that they are back from the dead.
I do not expect an opposition coalition to win all nationwide constituencies in a general elections. But even as a motley crew that they are,even without assuming an outright majority, results of past elections show that a united opposition will at the very least emerge with such a share that would render the BDP unable to govern the country without their consent and cooperation.
There is nothing to be gained from hiding the vast gulfs that exist between the three opposition parties. But for now it is important to emphasise the fact that there are areas (many areas indeed) where those differences are, by and large, of degree and not kind. Invariably it always pays to emphasise your areas of agreement than those that set you apart.
As things stand engaging in mortal combat for the same voters only serves to entrench BDP’s otherwise tenuous grip on power. Dividing the vote among a fragmented opposition, has in effect, as figures have consistently showed, proved a vote for the BDP.
The combat has to be reduced to a two-horse race. Of course, it will not be easy.
But that is the only way of ever knowing what chances there are that the BDP could lose power.
As things stand, the BDP has reached its sell by date.
Not even an immensely popular leader in Ian Khama could rescue the party from a precipitous decline into which it has been for the last fifteen years.
Such a decline is not necessarily because the leader is a bad person (even as may well be) nor that the party has lost its direction (even though it probably has), rather it is a result of the fact that the BDP has served its time. The party needs a break away from power to reinvent itself and also shed its layers of arrogance.
That happens everywhere. Even the immensely popular ANC in South Africa will one day come to a time when it will have to face up to what political scientists call voter fatigue.
And when that stage sets in, no party is worth rescueing for doing so is simply impossible.
