Opposition has now moved much farther away from any electoral victory in 2024. The Umbrella for Democratic Change and its offshoot led by Botswana Congress Party are drifting further away from each other as they plunge head first into self-inflicted defeat.
They are working exceptionally hard to do everything humanly possible to defeat themselves. Well wishers watch in despair the extreme lengths their party is prepared to go to attain defeat at the polls. In fact they are already looking, talking and behaving like a defeated lot – and elections are almost two years away to the day. Their prospects have never looked gloomier, not since before the death of Gomolemo Motswaledi that effectively gave them surprise momentum ahead of the 2014 General Elections. They have nobody to blame but themselves. The UDC seems to be in a tailspin. The BCP/AP axis might itself actually be in a death spiral. This might sound apocalyptic. But they are flying into the dark, and might actually run aground.
To say the opposition has become dysfunctional is an understatement. Each corner is visibly propelled, not by political realities on the ground but by the contempt, resentment and defiance they have for each other. Each side has become more and more absolutist in its dislike of the other side. It is not too hard to say as presently constituted, they are doomed. And it shows in their behaviour. The situation is so bad that their self-loathing conduct is now the sole lifeline of the ruling Botswana Democratic Party. Suspicions abound that money is involved – that each of the two sides has been receiving money from the ruling BDP through various state agencies; not altogether unfounded. The BCP/AP axis remains untested. Their adventure is a real political gamble – fraught with all the perils and pitfalls that make an accident almost inevitable. If things go wrong, it might turn out to be a disaster. Already there are signs that this axis has been hijacked and collapsed under the heavy weight of radical and hardline politics that lack pragmatism and any sense of compromise. More mature and moderate activists say it often feels like they are on a suicide mission.
Like the UDC, the BCP led axis has adopted a path that has effectively limited its options while increasing chances of a bloody defeat. The gamble by these two feuding former allies puts them at major political disadvantage. At the bare minimum, the gamble has evoked bad memories of what happened to the BCP in 2014 when the party chose to go solo and was terribly routed at the polls. Hence the underlying unease in both camps. Even among their hardcore bases, they have already started to lose room. A lot of anxiety sweeps across. Along the ranks there is no comfort and the file is consumed by compulsive restlessness. Across the whole opposition camp there is a groundswell of negative sentiment about the self that is floating around. Where there was hope, now an ominous foreboding persists. There is a feeling that something really bad is about to happen.
No-one is able to put their finger to what exactly it really is. But for each camp there is an unspoken voice that what they’re doing is not the right thing. Even during the best of times, opposition political parties are not happy places. And by any stretch, these are not the best times. A mere realization that they might be facing yet another election disaster in 2024 provides added frisson. The feeling, much of it genuine and well-founded is that they could easily be blindsided by the BDP. This is especially so because the true characteristics of the voter today keeps changing, hence difficult to say what voter will turn up in 2024. What the opposition is doing is a flight into the unknown. And a crash is easily one of the possibilities. In politics, as in general life, there is safety in numbers. Yet our opposition have adopted what will be the surest route to achieve a vote split. With defeat now a fait accompli, all the Botswana Democratic Party can do is be surprised at how easily things have turned out for them.
President Mokgweetsi Masisi’s allies say he is confidently looking ahead. Preparations, they add are now on course for a second term. That confidence is not a result of anything that the president has done. Rather it is an outcome of events on his opposing side. The opposition is failing right before our eyes. Clearly the downward spiral has caught the leadership on the hop. They do not know what to do or how to react. Childish behavior has become the order of the day. At UDC, Duma Boko is already doubling down on his efforts to alienate the BCP. In their efforts to prove that they do not care, the BCP is for their part doubling down on their attacks on Boko the person. The BCP leader, Dumelang Saleshando is desperate to show the world that he is answerable to BCP members and not to UDC much less to Duma Boko. These are the two political leaders who in the not so distant past were all smooches – with one starting a sentence and the other picking on it to complete it.
Now they cannot even bring themselves to say each other’s name. Harold Wilson once said a week it’s a long time in politics. Its not clear just for how long ordinary members will hold on in the face of such clear lack of direction and leadership. We can be sure there will at some point down the road start a steady stream of defections from the opposition to the Botswana Democratic Party. More such defections will start just after primary elections, once it is clear to some people that they have not been allowed to contest. Yet more others will leave after losing the elections in 2024. Unwittingly, the behaviour by opposition might just have opened the floodgates.
