The secret is now out! Thanks to Botswana Gazette newspaper we now know that Botswana Democratic Party is not for rent, it actually is for sale – and to the highest bidder.
Those of the BDP members who have read even the most elementary history will ÔÇô at least based on the party’s current psychological state – very much feel to be going through a familiar territory.
History teaches us that all empires ultimately end up in ruins. That too seems to be the inevitable destiny of Botswana’s best known political juggernaut. A.S Dada, the party’s long time treasurer, financier and benefactor is finally calling it a day. And the response to Dada’s retirement is that of cut and run. Every Jack and Jill with a million Pula in their bank account is lining up to succeed Dada. Empathy for the BDP is not something that comes naturally to me. But I think the names being touted evoke a demeaning insult that the BDP should resist.
Rather than instill and inspire stability that the party needs so badly, candidates so named for the party’s position of Treasurer expose a twisted frame of mind from which the party has been desperately battling to escape. A few weeks ago there was public outcry that more than three members of the Khama family had lined themselves up as candidates for the position of National Chairman, thereby bringing to the surface renewed charges of dynastic blood lines inside the BDP. The candidates for the position of Treasurer are however now making the dynastic charge leveled against the Khamas to pale in its innocuousness. Why is the BDP allowing itself to be bought?
That is the million dollar question. Based on the outcome of last year’s General Elections, we have always known that the BDP was in trouble. But we never imagined that the situation was as grave and desperate as to dictate that the party willfully sold its soul to anyone coming its way dangling a six digit bank account balance.
From the list of names wanting to fill key positions of the Central Committee, it is clear that the party is on one hand torn between a mode of survival, which insists on reforms and on the other, a mode of accommodating its caste and feudalist-like crass instincts that insist on maintaining the status quo.
The upshot of it all is a paralyzing gridlock ÔÇô resulting in a party stranded in no man’s land. Inertia is a more apt and appropriate description. There is no question that BDP needs to do more introspection, institute more concerted renewal and even self-criticism than it has hitherto done. The trouble though is that in rendering itself a wide-open broad-church that welcomes all and sundry, including money-slinging mercenaries, it may actually be going into a wrong direction that might make the party victim to predatory and footloose influences that will eventually prove divisive and even more destabilizing. However as much we might differ with the BDP, the fact remains that this party is part of our history and heritage. And when menacing influences that have the potential to derail, corrupt and even take over the country swamp the gates of party, we have every genuine reason to not only be worried but also ring the alarm bells.
Lest we forget, these are the same influences whose true loyalty to this country remains questionable.
As one party man put it to me, these people reflect what is the root of BDP problems; the culture of people being parachuted at the top before proceeding to mess up the party. Crucially, they are also the same elements that have been using their wealth to distort the country’s political playing field by financing BDP at the exclusion of other political parties in return for largesse and patronage from government. Now they want to go full force and take over the party. Lest we are accused of xenophobia or of being envious of BDP’s ability to attract these wealthy elements into its fold, it is important that we put history in context ÔÇô and in detail too.
The multi-party democratic dividend that this country has enjoyed for the last fifty years is something for which we shall forever be indebted to those who founded the Botswana Democratic Party.
It would however be grossly wrong to behave as though BDP founders were alone in creating the democratic foundations that this republic has become famous for over the years.
There were some outside the BDP and indeed who overtly opposed the party who nonetheless had a strong hand in designing those ideals. Additionally, an important point to make is that it would be disingenuous if not outright incorrect to assert that in taking the route that it creditably did the BDP was a homogeneous unit that unanimously agreed on such key derivatives like a multi-party formation.
There were some inside the BDP who if they had their way, the country could have gone the direction of say Zambia or Malawi ÔÇô which fell foul and chose to become one-party states, led by life presidents. But the party was run and controlled by men and women with strong democratic instincts.
Tragically, in trying to face up to its current challenges, the BDP seems to be backtracking on such fundamental questions that were correctly answered by such people like Seretse Khama, Quett Masire, Mout Ngwako and Goareng Mosinyi when the party was founded over fifty years ago. This is what plainly emerges from the list of candidates we now hear being bandied about for the position of National Treasurer.
Admittedly, as a party but also with liberal deployment of state largesse, the BDP has had a long history of resilience, most of it predicated on a rare knack of pragmatism, far-sightedness and innate ability to avert and circumvent an apocalypse when it approached.
But today a dark cloud of helplessness and inevitable collapse undermines all efforts at reinvention and regeneration. In more ways than one the buoyancy of opposition Umbrella for Democratic Change is a function of BDP’s self induced decline. The causal link between opposition ascendancy and BDP decline results in what scientists choose to call a domino effect.
That decline feeds into its own narrative, fast mutating into a self-fulfilling prophecy where a large swathe of pre-eminent BDP members are behind the scenes are already positioning themselves into what they deem as an inevitable implosion that will result with their party losing power. This feeling of inevitable collapse lies behind the departure of such pre-eminent individuals like A.S Dada who have reached a conclusion that the ship cannot be rescued. It is also the same feeling that is behind the arrival of mascots currently raising their hands that they can be trusted as messiahs. There is yet another problem that the party has to contend with.
In a way, the BDP is a victim of its glorious past.
As a result a good number of party followers remain strongly strapped in an overhang of nostalgia premised on the party’s history.
This feeling is not to be underestimated.
It is deeply ingrained and it sucks all attempts at innovation and renewal. BDP’s past success was premised on leadership’s sensitivity to prevailing dynamics.
The party leadership always had its pulse on the public mood which characteristic allowed them to adapt to changing situations.
As a result they always knew when it was time to be expansive and internationalist in outlook.
In equal measure, that leadership knew when it was time to recoil into nationalist introverted shells.
Those survival instincts seem to somehow have deserted the party.
They have been replaced by detachment, aloofness and a cold distance between leadership and membership.
Rebirth is always inextricably intertwined with hope and optimism.
For the BDP those virtues are currently in short supply. And they can only be brought back by people who understand party.
Which is why the BDP priority for now should be convincing Dada, (a party man through and through) to stick around ÔÇô at least up to a time when faith has been restored among the party faithful.
