I have a good mind there couldn’t be a better timing for reckoning than now, as this year stands as a signpost for us to check where we are as a country with reference to where we come from and where we desire to go.
I am unsettled by the realism that we may have ventured into a catastrophic period of extremism and engaging in bestiality with a monster called partisanism. We have watered-down our values to the level where we constantly have to ask ourselves who we are. The raging monster is decimating institutions that personified like parliament, councils and all that which stuck out as our feature. I hope we take this colossal issue seriously because it is about our future as a country; it is as much a political problem as it is socio-economic obstruction.
The creepy thing about partisanism is that its perpetrators never seem to realize their role in it; in point of fact, they never even perceive any extremism lurks in them. If you cannot discuss an issue with some political slant without veins popping out on your neck like cables in a music rehearsal studio and your heart suddenly pounding faster then you are more than ordinarily partisan. If you down-play the negatives and exaggerate the positives or vice versa then you should start to know where you belong.
Every state experiences its own frictions. There are age wars; the elderly want the youth to acquiesce to age and the youth are rebellious. There are income wars; everyone thinks their class deserves the lion’s share of the country’s resource. There are labour wars, tribal wars, political wars, religious wars and so on and so forth. This is all because at times, human beings tend to lack tolerance or fail to see the middle ground. That’s all the more reason why leaders, especially those in government must prefer a more ‘centricist’ and neutral outlook. The oddity of the situation is that partisanism has engulfed even our leaders; actually, I impute it to them as architects and purveyors of this malady. The statements they make to pander at their audiences are the blitz that will one day set this country ablaze. The statements are divisive, incisive and stop short of hateful. Thanks to that, now we have camps; angels against demons, the contented against the despondent, the subjects presiding over and examining the objects over a microscope. Depending on which side you feel you should be, you decide who your hero is and who the scoundrel is.
This situation is lamentable, it is not the Botswana that I used to know. There have been fatuitous statements by some leaders in government to ostracize the electorate just because they voted for the opposition. When it comes to national resource, no should be made to feel like they are star-crossed or that their area is a black-spot warranting to be deprived sorely on account of their orientation or allegiance. Leaders across the political divide have become reckless and you can never count in vain for legions of apologists and hooligans who would chew you to the core if you dared point out the recklessness; people who are well versed in the area of banter and slander. That creates arrogance because flippant action cannot be questioned. Equating corruption to cancer makes me run short of equivalents for partisanism because it begets a whole gamut of ills, corruption inclusive. Just look at what our parliament has descended into. Parliament was supposed to be our epitome, not an opposition or BDP club-house where people can make jester acts. Look at what some councils have become. We are degenerating into a nation of bigots and extremists, and we are losing our place in the world.
Nowadays, it is difficult to have a decent conversation with a random person about the achievements of our country or its failures without inducing a thought that you are a member of a particular party and thus getting a comrade-like or opponent response. Can’t we just be people and not relegate ourselves to political symbols. We all have to tip-toe around cogent issues and second-guess the next person. Most of life’s issues border on politics. He is not wise he who abstains from political discourse. The only thing that we can do is to reduce the emotional stakes therein. I can perceive pastors censoring their sermons, prophets truncating their visions for fear of offending a section of their audience or appearing to be politically aligned. I can’t imagine a business person wanting to point out how certain circumstances stifle growth of his business or help it to flourish without bowdlerizing their views. Some public servants cannot even begin to talk about their pathetic salaries without appearing to further the mandate of a labour union that is in cahoots with a political party. Once more, it is because politicians cannot handle the enormity of the task ÔÇô having or seeking power to control production and distribution of state resource is no child’s play. Failing on that area shoves some into a higher level of the expression of self-doubt; arrogance, smugness and mudslinging. They arrogate to themselves the good they are not and praises they are not due. They whip up frenzies to inflate themselves and deflate the opponent ÔÇô I will not be surprised if one day apologists of one party imputed bad weather to their opponents. What started off as sporadic cases is snowballing into mass-hysteria. In the process, the country gets buried in the morass of political mud-wrestling that reverses our gains.
Our current reality is a grim harbinger of future discord. It only falls short of veridical by propinquity to avertable. We should ask ourselves, ‘who gets hurt the most in this game?’ or conversely, ‘who benefits from it?’ if there are any by-products of partisanship . If we are going to glaze-over on political matters and sleep-walk through life, we must be aware that we all sit on the razor’s edge and that all our posteriors are going to be cut too deep if we don’t avert the imminent danger ÔÇô an all out war to be specific!
That was my 5thebe contribution as we cross into the next 50years.
