Moral standards in Botswana’s public life are at their lowest.
It is very unlikely that the country’s founding fathers, like the late Sir Seretse Khama, would, upon waking up, be able to recognize that this is the same country for which they sacrificed so much to give it a chance in its early years.
The decadence, the attendant lack of shame and open greed by those in leadership are contaminating the air.
It was always a fact of life that politicians could not be trusted, but we never imagined even in our most pessimistic tones that the politicians would one day be the ones literally presiding over the moral degeneration under which our country is currently besieged.
That dishonour we always set aside for people in business and commerce.
The frequency and regularity with which our elected politicians are hopping from one party to the other has reached levels that in other countries would be condemned as a naked disgrace.
What has happened over the last twelve months is out of the ordinary.
Even by their own standards of unreliability, our politicians have been consistently outdoing themselves.
We have reached a phase where it can no longer be justified.
Time was when politicians represented the antithesis of the business world ÔÇô where greed, amorality and venality are all accepted, rewarded and actively promoted as shrewdness.
That was the time when politicians were in touch with the people, related with them and because it was all about service, politics was itself perceived as a moral alternative second only to that other route which was provided by the church.
May be we should be careful not to be too theological about it, but the truth is that few of our politicians are in it for the right reasons, and much less are in their political parties because they believe in what those parties stand for.
Back then, politicians were real human beings many of whom were honest and open about that which they said they wanted to do once elected into office.
Many of them fought corruption and voluntarily passed many opportunities at self-enrichment because they were in politics not for money but to serve.
It’s amazing how today our so-called politicians have teamed up with businesspeople to literally skin the country.
Except for the fact that politicians have long ceased to inspire any trust and confidence among voters, it really is depressing that for a good number of our politicians ÔÇô and this applies to council all the way to cabinet ÔÇô making money corruptly no longer seems to matter.
The voters no longer know what to make of this.
Of course, the media is to blame for lowering standards.
We have actively institutionalized mediocrity by lowering the bar in what should be expected of our leaders.
Because, as the media, we worship politicians, we no longer are able to see the decay among our heroes even when it has long set in.
But there is another side of it that we are still to address: poverty among our politicians.
As a nation we have to make a decision on the kind of person we want for a political leader.
Other countries have taken deliberate decision to ensure that only people who are sufficiently wealthy in their own right will be considered for positions of leadership.
Yet other countries have made decisions that only people who are avowedly against self-enrichment can be trusted with the public purse.
Curiously, in Botswana, we have accepted as political leaders people who are still active in their personal wealth accumulation drive.
Hence the crisscrossing between political parties!
In the increased cross-party contest for membership that has become so much a character since the BDP split, it was almost inevitable that economic power, patronage and largesse will play unprecedented influence as factors of recruitment and retention of members.
It has all been reduced to a contest of who has more to give.
This is simply a contest that Opposition parties cannot win.
In fact, given the nature of Botswana’s political economy where government controls everything, it is a race that the opposition lost before it even started.
Councilors are especially vulnerable in their venality.
Many of them are knee-deep in debt and are no longer able to continue financing their traditional lifestyles of high pretence. This makes them more open to be obtained at a price.
It is not that councilors are inherently corruptible.
Economic times have made them so. As a result of the difficult economic times many of our councilors are leading an existence of penury that borders on destitution.
This is not to say Members of Parliament are themselves immune to these shenanigans.
There have been murmurs that some MPs have been crisscrossing between political parties because they are scouting for greener pastures.
The same poverty that is driving our political leaders to behave like wild dogs is actually worse among ordinary citizens and public moral standards will not be improving unless people’s economic well being improves.
