There are palpable signs of compelling turmoil inside cabinet.
This week there was a letter telling trade unions not to bother about salary increase because the economy was still reeling from Covid 19.
The letter was embarrassingly withdrawn the following day.
In the end the public has every reason to ask who is really in charge.
It is all because it does not add up.
What was supposed to be a far reaching cabinet reshuffle has in all honesty been nothing but a whimper.
Only one minister was sacked – Thapelo Matsheka.
Losing a job is never easy, but under the circumstances he should count his sacking as a blessing from God.
Incredibly, there has been no person of substance added to cabinet from outside of it or from the backbenches to fill the departure.
Mpho Balopi, that streetwise Secretary General of the ruling party had long resigned before all the noise started.
Now the reshuffle has come and gone. And it has produced no waves.
More than before, you can be sure that henceforth the President will do all the talking at the cabinet table.
He likes it that way. He likes talking, but more because he hates being challenged.
The strategy among ministers eager to stay in cabinet has been to appease and placate the president to ensure survival. They keep quiet only opening their mouths to praise him.
In that way they have captured our president.
Unvarnished advice, even when given privately is considered dissent.
And like dissonance, dissent is now viewed as blasphemy.
The mood has totally changed from when the president announced and then sworn his first cabinet following 2019 general elections.
That feeling of hope and optimism has been replaced by nail biting.
Silencing debate, killing alternative views and killing dissent is ultimately a shortsighted approach favoured by dictators.
The sacking of Dr Matsheka especially goes a long way to demonstrate how much things have changed.
In the beginning Matsheka was appointed as Minister of Finance.
This is a very key ministry.
After a short stint the president removed him to a ministry of infrastructure.
The issue it was said at the time was that Matsheka had an insurance business that made him conflicted.
There was almost no sympathy for Thapelo Matsheka.
His transfer at the time made a lot of sense, not least because there was still an assumption that fighting corruption remained among Masisi’s top priorities.
The nation did not at the time have any reason to suspect that Matsheka’s so-called conflict of interest was only a convenient excuse.
The truth is that by the time he was moved from the Ministry of Finance his relationship with the president had all but collapsed.
He had dared to stand up to the president.
The president was effectively sacking him not out of principle but to spite him, show him his place and prove who was in charge.
Remember how Barrack Obama appointed Hillary Clinton as his Secretary of State following a bruising contest between the two?
People were to quite rightly call Obama’s cabinet a Team of Rivals.
Now president Masisi has gotten rid of Dr Matsheka from cabinet.
I have known Dr Matsheka for almost twenty years now.
He is smart, streetwise and thoughtful.
He is strong-willed. And easily speaks his mind with little to no goading.
Like all of us he is no angel. And in this cabinet he was in the wrong place. And in the end stood no chance.
I was surprised when he left business for politics, not least because I never advise anybody to join politics. I despise politicians.
I believe in politics because of the potential it all holds, but I have a terribly low regard of politicians – across the board, and regardless of the position.
Now Dr Matsheka has with his recent sacking tasted what politics really is all about.
That sacking, coupled with his naïve political assumptions, probably an outcome of academic detachment will elicit some sympathy.
Politics is much more than churning out economic data.
It is about messaging the egos of the big guys.
It is also about placating the leader and telling them that they are almost like Jesus Christ.
If Matsheka had thought winning a parliamentary seat accorded him respectable treatment now he knows.
One needs to do more, including kowtowing to the man in charge.
His sacking is intended to belittle him, especially in the eyes of his voters.
The message to them is clear; you made a mistake in electing him. Find somebody else.
At least on paper Thapelo Matsheka is by far the most educated person in parliament today.
But this is Africa. Education does not matter.
When he was president, Ian Khama did a lot to prove that education did not matter, including appointing his relatives with no requisite qualifications to become members of the university Council.
A similar thing was happening at cabinet albeit at a lower intensity.
Our Members of Parliament should be content sitting on the backbenches.
That is what happens in other countries like in the House of Commons in England.
You just have to look at the number of backbenchers who went to Eton, Oxford, Cambridge and even to Harvard who came back to be ordinary Members of Parliament. And still be happy with it.
Our Members of Parliament should cease aspiring to go into cabinet.
If they can’t find peace in being ordinary Members of Parliament then they will end up being bitter.
Thapelo Letsholo is a classic case.
He should tell his followers that he is happy outside cabinet.
That alone will give him immense peace of mind. For some reason lot of his admirers feel he is being humiliated by being overlooked for cabinet appointment.
He must also tell his followers that he did not join politics to become a minister of state.
Too many theories are floating around as to why he has been perennially overlooked for cabinet appointment – including that there are intelligence reports blaming him for all sorts of crimes. Silly!
A much bigger issue that the country has to grapple with is why the president is so bad at making appointments.
It has got nothing to do with lack of adequate or appropriate material.
It simply has to do with the big man himself. He is unable to take advice.
In his appointments, the president tries to secure himself first and then the nation later.
That cannot work – and the high turnover in government is testimony to that.
Going forward fewer and fewer people will want to work for the president.
It is often a result of paranoia and insecurity on his part – but vanity too.
These are innate traits that might be impossible to change.
Should we say the country is doomed? The jury is still out but will be in quite soon.
