This week marks President Ian Khama’s third year in office. How time flies!
It feels like yesterday when Festus Mogae passed the baton to a successor under whose shadow he had served for the preceding ten years. For the ten years that he was president, to many it felt like Mogae was only in office while it was the Vice President who was actually in power. But when he finally got his chance to ultimately call the shots, fate dealt a deadly blow to Ian Khama. In a very literal way, the economy crumbled.
An accomplished populist who likes throwing money around, the President has had to come to terms with the painful reality that there is simply no money to play around with.
But worse than the collapse of the economy has been the ruling party split.
As if those two were not enough, the President now finds himself having to contend with rising levels of corruption within his cabinet.
There is now not a week that passes without the President receiving a call from corruption agency, DCEC, advising him to brace himself for yet another embarrassment as one of the ministers is due in court to answer charges of corruption.
How sad! But we should have seen it coming.
The party that Khama now leads is totally different from that which was led by Festus Mogae and Ketumile Masire.
The swagger is still there but the old texture and mentality are long gone.
People are no longer in it for public duty but for self-enrichment.
It was only a matter of time before the ruptures that started at party level were felt at cabinet level.
We have been trying to read his mind since it became clear that his cabinet was due for reshuffle, but with very little success.
His piecemeal approach is the upshot of a devastating absence of manpower.
The buck stops with the President, but on this one not even him has much room to maneuver
As things stand the President has played all the cards he has been dealt.
With fresh signs that at least two more of his ministers are likely to fall to corruption charges, it must be pretty certain to Khama that the centre can no longer hold.
In all these troubles he only has two options: he can invite opposition into his government to form a Government of National Unity or dissolve parliament and call elections with the hope that new and untainted faces will make it into parliament.
Khama’s customary disdain for opposition politicians can no longer go on.
His disdain for opposition politicians, most especially the Leader of Opposition, Botsalo Ntuane, suggests a level of indifference if not denial that is exceedingly dangerous for a president who says he seeks to take the country to new heights. He has to change that attitude.
There is no question BMD has caused Khama real and personal pain, but he now has to accept the new party as a part of life. As the English would put it, “Live and let Live.”
Khama now needs the BMD more than the BMD needs him.
I have always looked at it as an acute feeling of inner personal inadequacy that President Khama shall take to his grave that the BDP, a party founded by the beloved father was to first split under the watchful eye of the son. But he has to stop brooding about the BDP split.
Powerful as he may be, he cannot turn the wheels of history.
What we now have is a president who set out promising so much but has ended up delivering so little. Much of it, let us be fair, is not of his making. The best he can do for himself is do that which is in his power: share power or call elections.
He has to start making concessions and admitting that, as fate would have it, he is not in a position any stronger than he would have wanted. The record, of course, suggests Khama is unlikely to change, at least not much.
But reverse the course he will have to. There is not much choice.
A fierce believer in loyalty who places unusually high premium on trust, Khama will in the next few months watch in horror as his circle of political friends crumble as many of them fall victim to corruption charges.
In the meantime his parliamentary party, the pool from which he chooses ministers has dwindled to a point of exhaustion. He literally does not have a fallback position he could lean on in case of an emergency. As we speak there are very credible reports that he may yet lose at least two more cabinet ministers to corruption allegations. It is a Government that is rotten from within.
As I look around, I sense that the only way to save this Government is by calling opposition into it, or going the full length by way of dissolving parliament, which will pave the way for fresh elections.
What a terrible way to celebrate one’s anniversary in office!
