However hard I try, I just cannot stay away from what, from day one, I have perceived as inappropriate behavior by the Botswana Congress Party.
For many of us who follow politics of this country, a decision by BCP not to be a part of the opposition alliance has continued to be a source of immense aggravation, not least because the reasons given have continued to be as disingenuous as the very process that was deployed to reach that decision.
Very little of what is said about why the BCP has not joined forces with other opposition parties is true.
Often, the public is made to believe that that BCP has stayed out because the other Umbrella components are too riotous, too unruly, too rancorous and too unwieldy for the liking of the ambitious and image conscious BCP.
The truth though is that BCP real owners ÔÇô who, by the way, are a small crowd of financiers and intellectual benefactors – take serious fright from the slightest thought of being required to share power and the spoils with other parties of the alliance in the event the Botswana Democratic Party falls off the mast as it sure will.
Intolerant and authoritarian as ever, the BCP real owners want all the loot for themselves. Thus an alibi had to be crafted for the BCP to stay out; and at all cost.
The big decision not to join is often carelessly and untruthfully attributed to general membership. Not only is that patently untrue it also is particularly annoying because, like many others before it, that decision was hand-woven by the small patronizing, power-driven and self-righteous club that controls and dominates the party and only forced down the throat of a naïve membership with no allowance for debate let alone dissent.
This beggars the question: just who runs the BCP and for how long will the party’s infamous reputation of serenity remain intact?
Exponential growth of the party’s over ten-year existence has given it a self-belief that it is destined for power. Add to that the priceless ambition of many of the party’s cadres, chiefly the current leader, Dumelang Saleshando, and you get a glimpse of what a dangerous dictatorship BCP really has become.
Dissenting views are not tolerated because they are viewed as lengthening or even derailing the path to power.
For them, the march to power is analogous to the biblical Promised Land. Everybody has to march to the tune or they will be heartlessly left by the wayside.
There is no question that Saleshando’s leadership of the BCP is fraught with too many terrible difficulties.
It is well known in political circles that for the BCP, power, and with it control of the party, rests outside those who hold official positions.
But for Saleshando and his executive to have succumbed to the party’s red-eyed wing of hardliners led by Phagenyana Phage and Vain Mamela who are, by the way, themselves poodles of the party’s powerful, faceless and unaccountable moneymen, is deplorable and reprehensible.
The stage-managed and well choreographed so-called consultation that ultimately took the BCP out of the Umbrella will in the near future be looked back at as a point in history where the mythical fa├ºade of BCP as a well-oiled and united political machine had started to go bust. The outcome has also confirmed BCP’s reputation as a bullying political machine.
Clearly, there will always be people in an organization who will not want to work with other people from other organizations. At BCP, the greater part of discomfort for such people stems not from any honest analysis of events but from a smoldering fear to share power and limelight with other opposition parties.
The BCP decision to opt out was a bad one for the country and, as time will bear us out, also for the party itself.
A reminder that BCP’s inappropriate behaviour will not go unpunished came early in the week.
This past week, the media has been awash with reports of the resignation of a BCP Women’s League Chairperson. She cites the BCP’s refusal to be a part of the Umbrella.
Good riddance, the party official spin doctor shouted outwardly.
But it will not stick.
More resignations or, at the very least, more instability can be expected.
This is so evidently true that there is no point repeating it here, but still we have to.
From their decision to stay away, we have learnt a lesson that contrary to the long standing presumption that BCP was a level-headed party with a more mature and grounded leadership than the Botswana National Front, the BCP could actually be as infantile, if not more. We have also learned that the fa├ºade of unity inside the BCP has more often been achieved with ruthless bullying of the membership. The party’s media savvy propaganda machine is remorseless in its manipulation of the media.
Relations between BCP and the Umbrella have been messy, in part because BCP hardliners are hell-bent on burning the bridges, their strategy being to ensure that there is no going back.
The tragedy of it all is that some of the alliance leaders have fallen into this innately more superior BCP propaganda trap and have started maligning the BCP in return.
Now with the BCP playing victim, this has so far proved a terrible public relations for the Umbrella, exactly what BCP had all along wanted. The key, I suppose, is for the Umbrella to remain fixated on the hope and think mode that, however messy relations have been, however dishonest BCP has been, it can still come under the tent.
