Two weeks ago the leader of Botswana Congress Party, Dumelang Saleshando addressed a news conference the biggest outcome of which was to invite Duma Boko for talks and possible cooperation at the coming General Elections. It has not have escaped our attention that the invitation to Boko came just a day after Saleshando effectively claimed the position of Leader of Opposition in Parliament after victory in the Francistown West by-election; a symbolically important milestone that was unfortunately allowed to be submerged under the heap of meaningless political theatrics. The media, perhaps inevitably seized on the occasion of the pres conference to depict Saleshando as a new kid on the block; there calling the shots and shouting instructions at leaders of smaller parties on the opposition side as he reminded them of who was now in charge.
The most creative was a tabloid headline that put Saleshando’s bolder picture side by side that of Boko who was eclipsed by a dark silhouette, apparently to highlight that the BNF and UDC leader was now fading into irrelevance. We have no gripe against media. It is the grandstanding conduct by Saleshando that is to blame for the entire fracas. Any organisation that initiates talks to the other on such an important and highly sensitive matter as forming an electoral alliance through the use of a press conference should not be taken seriously. This is at best condescending arrogance and at worst outright showy mischief making. True their nature, the BCP are deploying their usual public relations gimmicks to cloud real matters of substance.
Saleshando’s strategy, while deliberately designed and calculated to win a public relations battle, it conceals the cold plotting, ruthless ambition and outright untrustworthiness communally shared by many who today make key decisions inside the Botswana Congress Party. This column has argued more than once in the past that the BCP cherishes public relations over substance and that the party has no patience for anything that puts the country ahead of their timetable to seize state power. Personally I am still to see a group of people more driven and dedicated to a philosophy of winner-takes-all than the BCP. The bracing confidence and indifference runs down right from the very top, permeating to even the lone members that reside somewhere in the country side.
The reason why cobbling relations between BCP and BNF is often much more difficult is because of the language that is used against the other party including at the highest leadership levels. BCP members, we have to give them credit for it, are masters of abusive language. Save perhaps for their founding President, Mike Dingake who often struggles to differentiate himself from the flock by the use of mature and conciliatory albeit somewhat snobbish language, the tone and texture of the debates across the members is always the same; abusive and acidic. If Saleshando’s gesture is genuine, first the BCP has to stop hurling insults at the BNF.
He also has to rein in his party’s media implants who perennially ridicule the BNF and its leadership including turning all sorts of well meaning public debates into emotional theatres of abuse. It should be of particular concern to Dumelang Saleshando that even as he is himself extending an olive branch, however conceited and pretentious to Duma Boko, his followers at the same time continue to spew vile and venom at the BNF and other UDC partners at all venues of public contact. When all is said and done, Saleshando’s invitation still has to be put into context. By publicly inviting Duma Boko to the table, only a day after claiming the position of Leader of Position which his party has for so long craved and coveted, The President of the BCP is essentially demanding from the UDC a process that amounts to self-abasement and self-denouncement, including apologizing for daring to differ with him in the past. “Now that I have beaten you to it, let us come and talk. But only under my terms,” Saleshando seems to be suggesting.
The BCP way of doing things, and this has happened many times in the past is always to find a way to humiliate and scorn the Botswana National Front. The tragedy of it all is that even if Boko was to agree to come to the table under strictly BCP rules, past quarrels will not be allowed to go. As in all previous encounters at these kind of negotiations, especially now because Saleshando’s followers vehemently believe they are the second biggest party in the country, the BCP will over and over again bring back past grievances, literally chronicling Boko and his party’s past sins, past omissions and highlighting just why because of its historical shortcomings, Boko’s Botswana National Front – a party from whose womb the BCP, we should never forget was sired – should not now be allowed much space to lead because it has perennially failed. The reason for this kind of attitude is because invariably, the BCP always sees itself as a wronged party; always a victim and never an aggressor . This is notwithstanding the increasing aggression of its members to always hijack and kill all public debates through their now refined use of uncouth, crude and intimidating language. This is nothing but vanity at its worst.
Under such circumstances it is the leader who should rise to the occasion. But asking Saleshando to intercede on the side of humility or good reason is itself a wasted effort. This is because when he is himself not the one goading these embers of political thuggery from behind the scenes, he is more often a hostage of faceless but exceedingly powerful commercial and economic interests that finance the BCP. Rightly or wrongly, BCP has now established for themselves an infamous reputation of being bad-faith negotiators, controlled by a secretive clan the true motives of which are unknown other than their ingrained hatred, not for the BDP, but for Ian Khama who they view as aloof and contemptuous to them. The onus is on the BCP to prove us wrong.
