Wednesday, November 13, 2024

Peddling hypocrisy and hatred

Masire was Vice President for 14 years and President for 18 years. He now tells the nation that there is a need for funding of political parties. What is his reasoning? So that people do not accuse them of taking funds from Al qaeda. For ages Masire resisted all efforts to allow funding for political parties. His main motive was to avoid a level playing field. Deep down in his heart he did not want Batswana to have a choice about who ruled them. At its formation BDP wanted to get rid of excessive powers of the chiefs. One cannot help but see how quickly Masire transformed into the very thing that BDP set to abolish, a chief.

Mogae was President for ten years. He never made condoms available to homosexual prisoners. His government resisted calls for condoms to be made available to homosexual prisoners. He was supposed to be champion of the fight against HIV. Now that he is no longer president he wants condoms in prisons. Surely nothing has changed. What new facts have come to the surface that did not obtain during his tenure?

Kwelagobe was at one time Minister of Presidential Affairs and Public Administration. He was responsible for parliament. He never made any moves to free parliament from the Office of the President. Now he is joining calls for the same as if the calls are new and never existed when he was a minister. What new facts have come to the fore that never existed when he was responsible for parliament?

Recently I read the story of a 106 years old poor woman, of Kweneng, in one of the local papers. She was in her sixties when Masire became Vice President, Mogae joined the Ministry of Finance and Development Planning and Kwelagobe became a Member of Parliament. More than Forty years of Masire and Mogae development planning and Kwelagobe being a member of parliament she has nothing to show from their over glorified achievements.

Nothing contextualises the hypocrisy of Masire, Mogae and Kwelagobe than the circumstances of this old woman. We fed and dressed Masire and Mogae when they were presidents, and continue to do so after they failed this old woman. They live in luxury and comfort even though they have never generated a single Thebe for this country. They have ensured that this old woman never gets her share of the mineral revenues of the country. Many more have died never having tasted a share of the mineral wealth of this country under their watch. Masire and Mogae have appropriated for themselves the share that should have gone to this old woman and others like her.

I do not think the old woman particularly cares for Masire’s views on political party funding. Perhaps if we had political party funding the BNF might have won elections and given effect to better programs in terms of distribution of the mineral revenues, and she would have gotten her share. Masire made sure that the BNF message was not heard. He denied her the right to make an informed choice.

I do not think the old woman particularly cares for Mogae’s views on condoms. Why are condoms more important than equal distribution of mineral revenues? Why must she live in abject poverty in a nation of less than two million people that is supposedly well managed? The price of the so called prudent management is her poverty. She has been betrayed.

I do not think the old woman particularly cares for Kwelagobe’s view on the independence of parliament. It is not control of parliament from the Office of President that denied her a share of the mineral revenues. It is parliamentarians of Kwelagobe’s calibre who have guaranteed her poverty. Parliamentarians who have power to make laws for equal and fair distribution of the national wealth but who choose not to do so. Instead they indulge in freedom of expression and call for parliament to be independent. No amount of independence can make a man what he is not.

We have been independent for more than forty years. This independence has not made Masire, Mogae and Kwelagobe love Batswana. They have resisted calls for formulation of a citizen economic empowerment law. They have gotten into bed with foreigners to rob our people of a chance to hear an alternative voice. De Beers did not finance BDP and Masire for the interests of Batswana, but for the interests of one family, and Masire, Mogae and Kwelagobe gladly chose this relationship over having an intimate relationship with Batswana.

I once met an old Mosotho man on a bus to Mahalapye and we got to talk politics. He told me that one time they were called to State House by Seretse who cautioned them about teaching Batswana politics. He said that Seretse told them that he liked Batswana the way they were. What Seretse liked were an ignorant and ill informed Batswana. It is this idea that Batswana are ignorant and ill informed that informs the hypocrisy of Masire, Mogae and Kwelagobe. I doubt though that we are as ignorant and ill informed as they think we are.

Also at the center of their hypocrisy lies a deep seated fear that we will know that commoners had a chance to shine and failed. When Seretse called Masire to be his assistant he gave commoners a chance to prove that nothing really turned on ones birth. They had a chance to prove him right and they failed. Instead they betrayed our people. Fortunately they do not define what commoners are capable of.

Even when they were fighting amongst themselves one of them called in a royal to protect him. They could not as commoners rely on merit to sort out their differences. Now that the royal called in to protect one of them is in power they are trying to have a second bite of the cherry. Well gentlemen it is too late. Our people have seen through you. You have no respect for merit. Only those who lack courage and who need approval can hang onto your hypocrisy and suggest that you are true proponents of democracy.

There are those who for some strange reason find their bearings on democracy from Masire, Mogae and Kwelagobe. But there is a greater majority who understand that Masire, Mogae and Kwelagobe are irrelevant as to what constitutes democracy. Masire, Mogae and Kwelagobe understand that even at the height of their powers half of our people who did not particularly care for their brand of democracy. Even within the BDP there were those who did not subscribe to a version of democracy where Masire could overrule the results of primary elections.

Why did Masire not call for funding of political parties during Mogae’s tenure? Why did Kwelagobe not call for independence of parliament during Mogae’s tenure? These calls are founded on hatred. The gentlemen cannot live with the idea that Kedikilwe is a heartbeat away from being president. After all, the undemocratic provision under which Mogae was made president was designed to sideline Kedikilwe.

They forgot that the good lord might favour them with longevity and that at one time they would not be in control of the center. When the opposition called on them to accommodate alternative views they would go to the kgotla and address people on foreign reserves and crack jokes. Batswana have been openly critical of Khama without their help. In the process Batswana will set standards that a president should meet. Batswana do not need their hypocrisy and hatred to taint their efforts to improve our democracy.

They are unhappy because showing pictures of abject poverty on Btv, when the signal spills over into neighboring countries, exposes the failure of their glorified economic management prowess. People in South Africa and Namibia can explain poverty from the racist regimes that excluded them. How does one explain abject poverty in a country that is supposedly rich and has not seen racial discrimination of the kind seen in South Africa and Namibia? They are worried that neighbours get to see that their alleged success is a fabrication.

Masire, Mogae and Kwelagobe have no respect for other people’s lives. No person who values other peoples lives can take more than thirty years to accept a very basic element of democracy; a level playing field. In the thirty years that they refused to acknowledge this fact people died. They died never having enjoyed their right to a democracy where a level playing field obtained. Only ill informed young people, not properly grounded in human rights and democracy, can hold up Masire, Mogae and Kwelagobe as true proponents of democracy.

I used to think the media was doing us a disservice by according these gentlemen space. Now I see that our people need to see the hypocrisy of these gentlemen. How else can our people do this than by the press giving them a platform to expose themselves? It is much better for a man to show his true colours than for someone to try to paint a picture of the man. To borrow the words of an African democrat, “selo se political party funding ke koi, ha gongwe o ka ha diphathi madi ha gongwe o ka gana’.

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