For all the euphoria and fanfare that has surrounded the much vaunted opposition cooperation, caution is advisable.
The haste and with it impatience to assume state power are now being used to attack anybody who dares to ask what happens after getting that power.
The cooperation of the parties is the beginning of a process that will lead to a change in Government, we are being told.
And indeed it might well be so.
In the next two years there might be a change in Government.
And so what?
Asking questions and getting answers is important. In fact it matters much more than blindly driving for a change of Government.
Africa is replete with examples of disappointed dreams that started as euphoria borne out of a change in Government.
Those dreams later mutated into human catastrophes and tragedies.
South Africa is the nearest yet saddest example.
Twenty years into a democracy, many black South Africans are beginning to ask themselves if their lives were not better off during apartheid.
It is a tragic reminder that excitable as it might be, a change in Government does not on its own bring about an improvement in one’s life.
Once the excitement of a change in Government subsides, reality sets in.
Apartheid was a horrible form of Governance. It is, admittedly an extreme example.
Yet in 1994 no black South African would have believed it when they were told that the same liberation heroes who had risked their lives and even went to jail to fight for the freedom of their people would twenty years down the line be among the most corrupt political bureaucrats in Africa. But there it is!
These are all simple life facts. One does not need to be a political science major to understand them or to narrate them.
With the ongoing opposition cooperation what the nation is being persuaded to do is to take a blind leap of faith with no information provided of what such a Government would look like should this amalgam of political parties win state.
Any attempt to get answers evokes a barrage of outrage. The swashbuckling arrogance on the part of some in our opposition sometimes border on naivet├®.
They clearly have no idea what it takes to run a country. They have no idea of the kind of fury they might have to contend with if the nation one day wakes up to discover that they have been sold a dummy.
We are being asked to risk possible chaos that could lead us to losing the very same freedoms we have come to take for granted.
This is much more than being persuaded to bet our whole future on a chance. It is like gambling with own lives.
Traditional view is that politicians cannot be trusted to keep their word.
Under the guise of blanket patriotism the media is being bullied to offer unquestionable support to efforts aimed at regime change.
Critics are mischievously and indiscriminately labeled as supporting the status-quo (as if there is anything inherently with that) or worse as mercenaries fighting for an opposing army.
It would be irresponsible for the media, in an attempt to placate the opposition to be active abettors in a possible future implosion of this country.
Freedoms, we must never forget are infinitely fragile. Yet our opposition wants to get to power on the back of burnt down freedoms.
Botswana has always been a country where different views were exchanged without any name calling or questioning an opponent’s bonafides.
That is fast changing. Thanks to insatiable hunger for power by the current crop of opposition leaders.
In their quest for power, they are killing all attempts at creating public conversations and sowing seeds and wounds of divisions that might in the end prove impossible to heal.
It is easy to grow to take freedoms for granted, but experiences from other countries teach us that once destroyed, rebuilding freedoms is an insurmountable task.
There are many redflags coming from our opposition parties that should neither be dismissed nor be made light of.
And no attempts are so far being made to either allay our fears or reservations about the true intent of some of their key players.
Many in the leadership positions in the opposition lack credibility and integrity.
Many of them can neither be trusted nor be taken at their word.
Duty and public service are for many of them not among their attributes.
Some of them have already publicly confessed to an undying obsession with finer things in life.
It remains a mystery why such people have opted to go into politics and not in business?
Once again to get answers we have to look to what has happened to Africa where plunder of public resources has been by far the greatest incentive attracting people with ulterior motives into politics.
Freedoms are by nature too important to be left in the hands of politicians to capriciously dispense or withdraw.
It would be dishonest of me to dismiss the wealth of intellectual presence among the opposition ranks.
But then as a journalist from Nigeria said to me when we met in Rwanda late last year, the worst Government that Nigeria ever had was the one with the highest number of high flying PhD holders and fast talking professors that the country has ever had in its history.
As a nation we should never lie to ourselves that as a people we can never be exactly like other people from other countries who have lost their freedoms as a result of their own governments, ending up fleeing persecution to seek abode elsewhere as refugees.
Freedoms, even as we taken them for granted today are much more important than a change in Government.
Personally I do not want my sons to end up as refugees because I blindly agitated for a change of Government without asking questions on how better the incoming Government would be than the old one, or because I became too frightened and too timid to hold my own for fear of being bullied by an impatient political activist who could not wait a day longer in the opposition benches.
We must as people be worried that the proposed regime change is now being marketed as a force of nature.
And anybody daring to question it has had lewd insults hurled at them.
If we cannot control these indignant power seekers while they are not yet in office, what hope do we have to put them under a leash when they have state power behind them?
A narrative is being created that we are in a kind of public emergency from which we can only be rescued by a change of Government.
Erratic efforts are expended to create a false sense of urgency.
That is of course rubbish.
This fiction is doubtless bolstered by the frightening longevity of the Botswana Democratic Party’s stay in power.
That longevity is being used as a self-fulfilling prophecy that “now is our time.”
Without any attempt to justify much less prove why, the indignants in the opposition are now telling us that after fifty years of the BDP it is now their turn.
Our opposition has all the characteristics of a feudal tribal lot.
And unless they change their behavior and work at earning rather than enforcing our trust, we should be wary of these rapacious pretenders.
