Thursday, February 13, 2025

How bigotry will reverse efforts to unite the nation

The people of Tswapong areas have every reason to feel deeply aggrieved. What Phagenyana Phage said about them at a UDC rally in Molepolole is by no means a laughing matter. It is hurtful, unpardonable and debasing. It is against all the values we stand for as a nation. It is bigotry at its worst. Only a depraved politician can justify it as a joke. More painful is the fact that his audience was in stitches as he uttered these words.

Roughly translated, what Phage said was that in his tribe it is part of their tradition to hire people from Tswapong as chief mourners every time a chief died. This is not only a lie, it is also despicable. He later on said he had said it in jest. Given the gravity of his misdemeanor, that should not be an excuse. Some context is in order. Phagenyana Phage is a political street-fighter; an unpolished politician with a strutting and swashbuckling demeanour that was only relevant in years gone by. He however remains very useful to his Botswana Congress Party. Not only is he their attack dog and hatchet man, he is also a kite-flier for their leadership.

They use him to test waters, say the things that they themselves are embarrassed to say and more crucially get him deployed to cut the necks of their enemies ÔÇô real or imagined. When he expresses such bigotry against Ndaba Gaolathe as he did over the weekend we should take Phagenyana Phage at face value. What he says in public is often what is said in hushed tones behind the scenes by his principals; a clutch of ruthless manipulators that includes political party office bearers and faceless strategists. Across Africa, tribalism is a sensitive issue. As part of the Africa and the Caribbean media delegation, late last year I travelled to Rwanda at the invitation of the African Union and the European Union.

Among other things we were there to learn from Rwanda’s dark history and see for ourselves the extent to which that country has since moved on. During lunch, my driver, Cedric with whom I have retained contacts told me that he had never seen either of his parents. Both of them died in 1994 when he was only a few months old. They were victims of a genocidal madness that by some counts killed more than a million people. He told me that he looked up to President Paul Kagame as his father. That, he said was because Kagame’s Government sent him to school, provided him with a free house and ultimately found him a job. I looked into Cedric’s eyes, and I could see written all over his face the ravages of tribalism. Cedric is a Tutsi. His girlfriend is a Hutu. Cedric’s aunt has tried to influence him against his girlfriend.

He has laughed off all his aunt’s hyperboles and superstition laden threats. Cedric represents the future. I doubt one can say the same about Phagenyana Phage. If anything he is a dangerous throwback to all that tragic past that Africa is trying to put behind.   According to reports, he has apologized. The fact that he says that he only made the remark in jest only serves to further add injury to an already thick air of foreboding. The country’s toxic ethnic past has never really been honestly and fully addressed, which is why from time to time we get bigots seizing on whatever opportunity they can find to lurch back to it.

The so-called paramount tribes have often stoked resentment from so-called minor tribes by their profound sense of entitlement and also undisguised supremacy. The world has moved on, but many of these tribal supremacists are still the same old self; shiftless and caught up in ancient time of exclusivity. It does not seem to matter to them that it is their attitude ÔÇô basically a result of innate and profound insecurity that is exacting such a high price against all efforts at nation building and co-existence. They are inherently set against societal evolution.

And as has always been the case, for them it’s all about bigger and lesser tribes. Phagenyana Phage’s statement – extreme and archaic as it might sound – is truly emblematic of this tenet. Inequality of tribes, and thus of people is a for them a recurring reference point The recent controversies that erupted when other tribes tried to install their traditional leaders as prescribed by own historical and traditional precepts are a result of these supremacists.

It happened in the Okavango areas, Manyana, in Tswapong and in a more subtle but unmistakable way also in Tonota. Tribal supremacists can continue with their vile ideas which when called out they say are jokes at a great cost and risk to the country’s unity and potential. Or they can accept that all human beings are the same and equal ÔÇô no matter the tribe, race or colour. The choice ultimately is theirs. They can however not have it both ways as Phagenyana Phage and his masters so deceitfully but vainly tried to do with his conceited apology.

RELATED STORIES

Read this week's paper