A week or so ago Ponatshego Kedikilwe announced that he would be retiring from active politics at the next general elections.
The announcement no doubt marks the end of an era.
His political career has been as long as it has been eventful and controversial.
There have been many triumphs along the way, but many losses and disappointments too.
His biggest triumph is that for almost a generation he was able to literally run and control the ruling party ÔÇô reaching his apex when he was both a senior minister and BDP national chairman.
His biggest loss however is that he bows out having failed to lay claim to his ultimate preferment ÔÇô the presidency.
Transparently ambitious, it was an open secret that PHK had for many years coveted the State House.
There is still however a mathematical chance that he will become a Vice President, a consolation prize, if you want, before the sun sets down on his political career.
It is a matter of tragic irony that even on this lesser role, Kedikilwe is basically at the mercy of a man who for a long time was his political nemesis.
Fate has not been very kind to PHK.
He did all he could, but in the end his best, it would seem, was never good enough.
A lot of factors, many of them beyond his control seemed to always conspire against him just when everybody thought the man was about to scoop the prize.
It all started when from nowhere the former President Sir Ketumile Masire engineered a constitutional amendment that brought about what has since come to be infamously known as automatic succession.
Sir Ketumile’s decision to amend the constitution preceded yet another blow when PHK was cruelly overlooked in favour of Festus Mogae for the position of Vice President after the death of Peter Mmusi.
As if that was not cruel enough, when he finally ascended, Mogae showed not the slightest level of magnanimity to the man he had been so clearly and so unfairly fast-tracked against.
Instead of choosing PHK as his Vice President, Mogae looked outside both politics and parliament.
Not for the first time and as it turned out not for the last too, PHK was once again overlooked.
By then the dice was cast.
But still Kedikilwe’s political life stubbornly refused to come to end.
Not without reason it however became clear to PHK that he was being deliberately undermined.
Crude and unfair treatment turned him into a kind of political rebel.
Now that loyalty and service had failed to bring the rewards he craved, he started to take those in charge head-on if only to get what he felt he deserved.
He fought might and main to retain the party chairmanship ÔÇô but eventually lost.
Against all norms and traditions, Mogae had publicly endorsed Ian Khama against Kedikilwe for that position.
Although a consummate intellectual, one of Kedikilwe’s biggest shortcomings as a politician has been a failure to transcend factional politics.
Although he is spending his last days in politics as a de-factionalised politician the fact of the matter is that his change of heart is not so much a sincere realization at the folly of factional bickering, least of all a result of any deep seated belief in neutral politics, as a profound feeling of bitterness against everybody else but himself.
Without difficulty historians will in future trace that Kedikilwe’s real political travails started with the BDP Ghanzi Congress where Ian Khama, enjoying the explicit endorsement of the President was treated like a rock star.
It was only after PHK had been betrayed by those on whom he had hoisted all his hopes that he recoiled from BDP factions effectively plunging himself into a cocoon that virtually turned him into a strange political loner.
At Ghanzi, Kedikilwe was deserted by all his old soul mates including his long time political chauffer, Daniel Kwelagobe.
Early after the Ghanzi loss, both the then President Festus Mogae and Vice President Ian Khama would complain that Kedikilwe appeared to be sulking, totally unable to come to terms with his defeat.
He was devastated. Politically he was a broken soul.
Following the Ghanzi defeat, those who attended cabinet and party meetings at which either Mogae or Khama was present say Kedikilwe would for the entire duration of the meetings sit with his arms folded, clearly brooding, saying nothing unless he absolutely had to or was required as a matter of fact to make a presentation on behalf of his ministry.
What was to be a difficult relationship had started to show immediately after his appointment to the ministry of education was announced at a press conference addressed by the President a day after general elections.
Shortly thereafter PHK resigned from cabinet where he was serving as minister of education. He said he felt inadequate, which was clearly a pretext.
The truth of the matter is he had badly fallen out with both Mogae and Ian Khama.
He resigned because he felt deeply mistreated and humiliated.
Together with Daniel Kwelagobe he established a second centre of power at the backbenches where drawing on their combined firepower of intellect and a deep knowledge of the parliamentary procedure and government business they started on a process that frustrated the pace of many initiatives brought to parliament by many ministers many of whom were still learning the ropes.
A few years later, Mogae tendered a public apology both to Kedikilwe and to the BDP for the harm he had caused when by endorsing Khama against PHK.
Faced with what amounted to backbench rebellion, the President reached out to both PHK and Kwelagobe to bring them back into cabinet, very much at the chagrin of Vice President Khama.
It is worth noting here that during his political career Kedikilwe has also had difficult relations with the media who he clearly despised for lack of intellect.
Things had come to a head after a weekly newspaper named him as one of the ministers that had accumulated arrears with the National Development Bank.
In his typical acidic sarcasm he called the story “the work of professional journalists, the work of experienced men of the press.”
A few members of Ian Khama’s clique have on a number of occasions confided to me that Khama did not choose Kedikilwe as Vice President not so much as a result of the hangover from their ugly contest for BDP Chairmanship but rather because he had unconcealed ambitions for the presidency.
Now that he has declared his departure, it remains to be seen if the party wall that has kept him away from his goal would be kind enough to give a consolation prize.
