The other day, I received a message from a friend: “By the time they go back to the BDP, they would have made a great mess of the opposition. The sooner they go back, the better for all of us.”
He was referring to Botswana Movement for Democracy. Not only was he being biased; I figured dishonest, unfair and nasty too.
I do not think BMD is about to rejoin Botswana Democratic Party, at least not as a group.
In the wake of the collapse of the opposition talks, all the opposition parties have been displaying deep-seated despondency within their ranks. The feeling has come naturally.
For all of last year, unity was all that opposition parties lived for.
Now that the dream has been comprehensively shattered, it is understandable that every one of them is asking if it was even worth trying.
For a long time to come, the collapse of the talks will be all that remains. It will be a festering wound that will not heal easily.
It is exactly because opposition talks have collapsed that the BDP is once again showing some swagger.
With no direct effort of their own, the ruling party has received more than they could ever have bargained for. After two years of blistering anxiety, the ruling party is once again in total control of the political landscape.
While the collective opposition is licking its wounds, the BDP is, for its part, busy licking its lips, and with relish at that.
They want to go for a kill and would want elections called as early as tomorrow ÔÇô if only to bury the opposition; once and for all.
For the BDP, the collapse of the talks is a rod with which to beat opposition ÔÇô from parliament floors to the freedom squares, from social networks to personal interactions. The ghastly mantra will not be ending anytime soon.
After the collapse of the talks, it’s like all opposition parties have walked into a changed world.
They look, behave and sound gobsmacked. They have lost all sense of direction. Other than blame one another, they have nothing else to say.
The expectations were too high, and they have been badly mismanaged.
For almost all of them, it’s like having to start from scratch. Not in the way of a born again. Rather the opposite.
Those parties not resilient enough might never reach their pre-talks full strengths.
The weaker ones among them may simply dissolve into permanent oblivion.
Though the strongest among them, I fear for the health of the BNF. Not for the first time the party finds itself at crossroads. The next few months will prove crucial.
It will be during that time that the depth of the current leadership will be tested.
The party’s history of perennial splits should not be allowed to replay itself.
But in a very bizarre way, the inertia in the opposition ranks mirrors Ian Khama’s presidency thus far.
Four years into his presidency, there is still not a single thing that Khama can point at as his biggest idea.
Will Khama leave a happier Botswana than the one he inherited?
Outside of the alcohol industry, what has been Khama’s flagship policy thus far?
I deliberately use the analogy of failed opposition talks in referring to Khama’s presidency because both cases promised so much only to deliver so little ÔÇô at least up to now.
A few months before he became State President, I wrote on this space that Ian Khama had the potential to become Botswana’s best president ever. I also added that if he failed he could be the worst in our history.
My views have not changed. All the ingredients ÔÇô of success – are in place. But even so are those of failure.
A head and shoulders above his predecessors in popularity, Ian Khama has had a much bigger room to maneuver than all of them. And he has remained too rigidly inside.
You would expect me to mention his housing appeal for the poor, his backyard gardens and, of course, his walkabouts as policy initiatives that have set him apart.
But the truth of the matter is that by deliberately whipping up public expectations, President Khama has raised the bar too high for him to be judged on things so elemental as to be frivolous.
His admirers say he wants to leave poverty eradication as his legacy, the same way Festus Mogae had wanted to be judged on his fight against HIV/AIDS. It may well be so.
But so far the jury is still out on whether or not Khama is succeeding in his fight against poverty. And time is running out.
I sometimes worry that by the time the jury comes back, we could be shell-shocked to learn that poverty actually increased under Khama’s watch.
President Khama cannot fairly blame the collapse of the economy for all his inadequacies.
He must also own up to a level of a lack of imagination.
For all his power, his popularity and a total lack of opposition (internal and external) President Khama is still to find his voice, at least as per the standards set for him by the public, which gleefully embraced his populist antics.
I don’t think he wants to be remembered solely as a President who was the first to ever break the BDP asunder!
That may be a legacy all the good, but it is hardly admirable.
