Barring a tragedy of seismic proportions, Mokgweetsi Masisi will next year be the president of Botswana.
After a long spell of uncertainty, the hurdle of who the next president will be has now been crossed.
What remains to be seen is exactly the kind of president that president is going to be.
If Masisi wants to make an impact, he does not need to delve too much into the advice of his ever present team of self-aggrandizing advisors.
What he needs to do is right there before his eyes ÔÇô in plain sight.
Masisi has to put politics behind him and concentrate on the economy.
Botswana is no longer Africa’s star pupil of the 1980s and 1990s.
Fifty years of a glorious history has come to an abrupt end.
This once promising student of Africa has gone exactly the same path that has swallowed other African countries.
To adjust the country’s psyche to this new downgraded reality, the incoming President will have to work at downgrading the country’s egos.
There is going to be a need for a paradigm shift amounting to a sea change on economic policy.
This would entail getting done with a false belief that Botswana is the best country in Africa.
That is the first part. Then there is another one.
The economic crisis the country faces today cannot be resolved by recoiling into a cocoon of comfort zones that we have grown accustomed to over the years.
The answer, to be honest lies in creating jobs for the multitudes of young people who have completed an education cycle but who do not have the requisite skills to be absorbed by the economy.
To create jobs, the incoming president, for example, needs to move away from the hogwash (his word) by some of his cabinet colleagues who hold that it is not the responsibility of Government to create jobs.
He needs to ensure that a Government he leads is at the forefront of efforts to create jobs.
These jobs do not necessarily have to be in the public service. Rather a majority of them could be in the private sector.
In short he needs to halt the closure of such companies like BCL, which Government closed on the flimsiest of reasons, based on an altogether fabricated and falsified prospectus.
Then Masisi has to work at totally overhauling the fundamental dynamics of Botswana’s economy.
The country has to cease being a mineral economy. This would involve restarting a process since abandoned to make Botswana a manufacturing and services centre.
First and foremost Masisi has to accept that diamonds, which have always accounted for so much of government revenue can no longer be trusted going forward to play a traditional role in Botswana’s economy.
In short the economy has to be weaned off the diamond addiction.
It will not be an easy task. But evidence proves anything to the contrary would be sleepwalking towards sure outcomes of failure.
For almost ten years now President Khama continuously put his bet on diamonds coming back from the dead and re-breathing life into the country’s economy.
To his disappointment as he prepares to leave office, diamond sales are exactly as he found them when he arrived in 2008 ÔÇô on a tailspin.
Then there is another part that borders on emotional intelligence.
Masisi has to accept that dwelling too much on our glorious history has been a gross mistake.
Too much self-praise has brought a kind of ingrained complacency that has sapped the country of all progress and innovation.
This much, the incoming president has to accept.
All of the above are easier said than done.
The incoming president can only embrace this thinking if accepts that like many promising pupils, Botswana got derailed along the way to end up among the worst performing students of the continent.
Embracing such a new kind of philosophy would as a necessity mean a willingness on his part to open up his Government to new economic policy debates beyond the usual suspects at the ministry of finance who march in lockstep with a tiny circle of their friends in the private sector.
These are the people who have misled this country and almost brought it on its knees by their misguided economic policy pronouncements.
There are people who strongly believe that for the country, Masisi’s presidency might turn out to be worse than Ian Khama’s.
It might sound unfair given that he is not even president yet. But then such is the nature of politics. Masisi has been around long enough for us to be able to judge him.
His detractors argue that there are some traces of a strongman in his general demeanour.
It’s hard to dismiss them out of hand.
For Masisi winning control of the BDP was the easier part.
Governing the country will likely prove much more complex.
And difficult choices lie ahead.
Throughout its long hegemony, the BDP has had a well deserved reputation of managing transitions with caution.
The party has done its part, and it’s now time for the man to do his part.
Masisi’s choice of vice president will send a clear message of his seriousness to uphold the tradition of a party that has wrought him.
His choice of vice president will portray the kind of politician he intends to become, especially whether or not he wants to be a serious politician.
It will signal the extent to which he is willing to break free or continue to be an appendage of the Khama legacy.
And more crucially it will send a clear message of his independence ÔÇô from the intelligence services that has propped his rise, but also to a clutch of heartless transactional quasi-politicians and Asian businessmen orbiting around him that have caused so much dissonance even among the ranks of his usually invertebrate BDP.
For a party steeped in showcasing loyalty above money, the preparedness recently exhibited to use money to control politics as shown at the BDP Congress in Tonota has not only been telling but also breathtaking.
But to be fair to Masisi, his otherwise comprehensive victory at that Congress has gone a long way to help him prepare the ground for the otherwise many pitfalls ahead. An endorsement from outgoing President Khama has also helped, assuming of course that such an endorsement did not come at a price of back to back tradeoffs that can only serve to weaken Masisi once he ascends.
The still unfolding coronation of Masisi has served to consolidate the BDP’s reputation of sobriety and competence when it matters most.
Other than the economy and creating jobs, one of Masisi’s biggest jobs will entail re-assembling many of the democratic safeguards so mercilessly dismantled by Ian Khama.
Only then shall there be enough proof that other than through collective responsibility requirement placed on him as cabinet minister, he did not always acquiesce to the many evils of a government that allowed him to rise through its ranks.
