We saw them yesterday wearing each others’ shirts. The spirits as well as the rhetoric were high. Today they are peeing on each other’s heads. The atmosphere is hostile and purely scatological. I have said it before, that wait until the talks collapse and as the American say, the shit will hit the fan! And now they are battling over a loo seat and not about taking over government. Once people battle over the loo seat know that they have resigned themselves to a life of opposition and a life of relieving themselves on a ruling party. Ba senka go tiisa lentswe la kganetso kwa palamenteng. A local paper called it a coup, the complete French term is coup d’etat. Oxford lexicographers say that coup in 1523 meant “A blow, stroke; the shock of a blow, engagement, or combat”. Perhaps that 1500 meaning was about to come alive had the BMD not brandished the standing orders requirements which chased the BCP out of the room. The modernists at Macmillan characterise a coup as an occasion when a group of people takes control of a country, usually by means of military force.
On this occasion, however, there was neither a tank nor an army and the loo seat remained safe from capture. It was a Thursday; a blessed day, a day in which bomme ba thapelo gather to pray, when a clandestine meeting was convened, and a conspiracy was hatched. A draft letter was produced and handed to that powerful woman from Kanye, the Speaker of the National Assembly, Honourable Margret Nasha. There was nothing honourable about the letter. The letter was not clean; it was dripping of poisonous and sinister intentions. These intentions were to be latter called democracy by Hon. Dumelang Saleshando on his Facebook page. The plan was that Honourable Mabiletsa would replace Hon Ntuane on the loo seat. By the way, there is nothing attractive about the loo seat. Indeed it is well know that an arrangement was made while the tripartite was in reciprocal love affair with each other that the loo seat would belong to one man alone and that man was that legislator with a cutting intelligence, Hon Botsalo Ntuane. However when this session of parliament began, instead of engaging on who could take the loo seat, a sinister plot was devised to push Hon.
Ntuane off the loo seat. Ntuane’s party, the BMD was not invited to the meeting. Actually, they were not supposed to know until it was too late. It was planned to be a perfect ambush. But they had not read carefully or they did not know the Standing Orders since the BNF and the BCP in parliament are not a coalition. So attached but they were sneezed away and their evil plot was exposed. There was shock and awe but it backfired. Now I understand matters better. If leaders cannot agree about who can take the loo seat, how can they agree on the constituencies, ministerial posts and the presidency of an umbrella party as well as that of the country.
Debates have been advanced on who approached who. Some say the BNF MPs approached the BCP ones; others say the BCP MPs approached the BNF ones. Does it really matter that much who began this road of darkness? What is not in dispute is that the MPs connived to push one Botsalo Ntuane from the loo seat. Whether the plan was conceived by which one of the parties it doesn’t matter much; the fact is it was executed by both. What BNF should have certainly done is approach the BMD with the proposal that it wishes to also take the loo seat, ka se a ba tshwanela. Then had the BMD legislators rejected such a proposal, it would have been understandable for the BNF then to seek an alternative route to have access to the loo seat. The BCP, having been approached by the BNF, if indeed they were, should have brought the BMD on board. They would have appeared mature and responsible and not as an angry bunch on a route to frustrate the BMD. The actions of the BNF and BCP legislators have therefore earned them much reproach. Ntuane doesn’t need the loo seat. After all he has lived far from the loo seat most of his life. Some have smelt it and yet not touched it.
Therefore not to have it is most disturbing to them. Some feel that to placate others, they should hand them the loo seat. Now this leads to an incredible challenges for the BNF. While the BNF together with its president, Duma Boko, is sensible and has in the past ten months or so, conducted itself admirably, the danger is that Mr Boko is not in parliament, and that if past media reports are anything to go by, Mr Mabiletsa may have resolved that it is better he ran things in parliament away from the hawk eyes of Boko; perhaps, just perhaps, he may have access to the loo seat. This has put much tension on the Front in itself, making it look like a party that is besieged from all sides.
Where does this leave all of us? Nowhere really. The BMD man still occupies the loo seat. Others are still barking from the sides feeling that they deserve the loo seat better than him. They argue that his delivery from the loo seat does not represent them. He is not opposition enough. Some had also I hear connived to spread the rumour that the man on the loo seat is on his return to the BDP. Opposition politics have become loo politics. They are not just dirty; they stinky and filthy and dangerously poisonous.
