Our politics is going through serious existential crisis. The air has been polluted as to be poisoned.
The behaviour exhibited by our political class is not a kind of failure that can any longer be forgiven with the hope that it is a passing phase.
Across the board, politicians are now looked at with suspicion.
A good number of citizens have come to view politicians as enemies of the people.
This is because politicians no longer inspire confidence, much less trust.
I write not as a person who despises politicians (even though that is my long held view) but rather as a person who innately believes that politics can be a source of good.
Owing to predatory behaviour by our political class, Botswana’s public standards have fast slipped into an abyss. We have become a laughing stock among countries that not so long ago held us in high esteem. And it is disheartening.
Unless there is a new kind of renewal, we may be headed for a tipping point upon which the voter will respond, not by staying away from the polls, as has been the case in the past, but by withdrawing altogether from the country’s democratic processes.
The situation may be worse with the Botswana National Front and the Botswana Movement for Democracy.
But a closer look reveals that the ruling Botswana Democratic Party has not been immune. Although they want to pretend otherwise, the BDP is not a role model when it comes to credibility.
This week, a Member of Parliament from Ramotswa, Odirile Motlhale, resigned from the BMD. He is the latest in a string of other BMD Members of Parliament who did the same. And in staying faithful to the script drafted by his friends, Motlhale has not bothered to tell the public what has gone wrong with a party that chose him as its Chief Treasurer less than two years ago.
Motlhale’s unaccountability to the voters is keeping in kind.
On account of events of the last two years, like credibility, the issue of trust is top most on the voters’ minds in this country.
The breach of trust has left the voter feeling defied, violated and, in some instances, mutilated.
There is going to come a time when voters will throw their hands in the air, give up on politics, just as they have started to give up on politicians.
When that time comes, the voter will cease to listen to a politician. When that time comes, the voter will stop believing in a politician.
And that point is not too far off. Instead of being leaders, our politicians have become a liability to this nation.
Just why are our politicians behaving this way?
Are these the people we should call leaders?
If that is true, then the standards have been allowed to slip too low!
It is not so much that Motlhale or any of his friends left the BMD.
It is not so much that, as a project, BMD has come to the end of the road.
It is not so much that the BDP is on a wave of renewal and thereby offering some allure of good things to these unanchored politicians.
Rather, it is a failure on the part of our young politicians who not so long ago the country had literally put all its trust on their small shoulders to be upfront with the nation when most needed to do so.
All of a sudden, the nation feels betrayed by the same people on whom so much hope had been invested.
There was a time when the public could be forgiving.
But so much has happened that gullible as Botswana’s voter may be they now feel taken for granted, taken for a ride and with more still to come, feeling abused.
The debauchery has been breathtaking.
With so many dysfunctions our politicians have too much to think about.
Unless they change their ways, politicians, as a class, will, in the near future, be literally fighting battles for their survival.
And that cannot be good; not for the country and, certainly, not for this unfaithful tribe.
