I remember an exchange I had with H.E The President not so long ago. I always try meet the country’s President before every session of Parliament. We talked around a number of issues but this one is pertinent to my contribution today
TAUTONA: I have a lot of respect for those two gentlemen you mention
TAWANA : I do not think I have a fifth of the respect you say you do for those two gentlemen
TAUTONA: You worry me, why are you this negative?
TAWANA: No Sir, you gave a position on the two and I thought I should give my position on them as well
The notion of agreeing to disagree only found currency in my world late in my 30’s. I thought the whole notion worked only when people wanted an excuse to stop debating an issue.
Those who know me will tell you I can argue for ever. I have been reading about the Umbrella Talks like everybody else. I have sat with Ndaba Gaolathe, I have read Gomolemo Motswaledi’s position. I have read and listened to Kagiso Ntime on Radio. I have read and talked to Dumelang Saleshando and I have heard of the Conveners position. My thinking is I that the deadline for talks is fast approaching and the bus has now warmed its engine.
One of my first Domkrag meetings outside Ngamiland was a session with friends at this lodge in Mogoditshane called YA RONA COUNTRY CLUB. It later dawned on me that the guys I was with were the famous BARATAPHATHI. I was given an opportunity to speak and used it to come down hard on this notion of compromise. This should be 2007 or thereabouts. Domkrag was headed towards the Molepolole Congress and the talk was “re beile botsetse”. You see I was born a kgosi, and one central theme politicians have always posited is that Botswana had to change from a feudal to an electoral system because this allowed people the opportunity to choose their leaders. BUT now that I am a politician people want to tell me the goalposts have moved. You can agree to agree but there are times when doing so means changing your centralizing ethic and being of a different identity altogether.
Tautona preached compromise before the Kanye Congress. I agreed with his position until I noticed from his language that he seemed to be hellbent on destroying the BARATAPHATI. He mentioned at a meeting in Falcon Crest that people should stop calling themselves BARATAPHATHI and he gave some reason why he felt that way. From then on I disagreed with a lot of what he said and voted against the TIRELO SETSHABA faction at the Congress. I have always felt there was no legally constituted BDP body that gave ANYBODY the mandate to go and destroy my party’s factions pre- Kanye.
So from where I stood H.E was out of order.
BUT now I sit watching the UMBRELLA and I hear people talk about distribution of constituencies and the argument centres around INCUMBENCY. I now have to agree to my own disagreement about the notion of compromise. If we agree to that then we have to admit that President Khama is validated in his pre Kanye Congress position and that it was wrong to put Domkrag through what is said to have been a brutal factional war. All candidates wether Umbrella or BDP have to go through a primary election. PERIOD. If there is no challenger to say the MAUN West incumbent with Lebogang Maile backing out of a Julius Malema fight then credit to Julius, but electoral processes cannot and should not be circumvented for short term mis-perceptions of harmony because by circumventing process you set up a precedent which you can never weave yourself out of. You are just postponing the inevitable and the voter deserves better. The voter deserves to rest assured that there will be stability in the picture you have put before them. To emphasize, there is not one MP who can tell you what they have achieved since the last election. We have been fighting party political battles and nothing else since, and the voter is the biggest loser.
To me the electioneering process is critical to our participatory democracy. I could deal with my people from a kgotla platform when I was a civil servant. I didn’t really have to meet and get to know them. I am KING if you remember, and Kgosi e a latwa and not the other way round. When electioneering you are forced to get into their houses and their lives and understand why they call certain issues their “problems”. In essence you become a “mokopi”. This humbling of our purported leaders is critical in shaping the people we want to be our representatives. When you skip primary elections you deny the electorate the opportunity to meet their potential representatives on their terms. We all have that friend who never wants to visit but is always insisting you should visit them. By this we are cheating the electorate. We cannot be seen to be choosing for them the people they are going to vote for in the General Elections.
So for me this whole discussion around the distribution of constituencies among UMBRELLA participants is pointless and I cannot agree to disagree unless of course you want me to ululate and agree with the fact that the destruction of bogosi was an exercise aimed only at satisfying some sophisticates agenda. I hear of high ranking party officials loudly proclaiming that they never campaigned for the critical positions they hold. This facilitates for non elected people like Vincent Seretse thinking they can stop me mid speech at a kgotla gathering, in my father’s kgotla for that matter. How did he get there you wonder? You should see people who have never won an election, at Congresses they prance around promising parliamentarians Cabinet positions. This is nonsense!
So for me any formation that comes up with a credible primary elections formula will win my vote. The Presidents of those under the umbrella have to compete at the primary polls to get my support. This is cardinal for me and I will not agree to this “agree to disagree” notion. By the time I left domkrag, I had lobbied for the outsourcing of the Voters Roll management to an auditing company. I was so proud and happy that the National Council had agreed to this. My thinking is that when you leave this part to the Central Committee (Negotiating Teams), then the whole process puts the credibility of the electoral system at risk of being corrupted for those who the Central Committee politically serve. That is in the main reason why the fight for the CC positions is so brutal. So it is either the Umbrella holds primaries or we admit that the BDP break up was just an ego exercise. President Khama is sitting somewhere in Mosu smiling at himself thinking “”ke le boleletse , basimanyana ga e nke e ithuta!!”
You cannot compromise yourself to such a point where you are unrecognizable. If I for one was to do so, e tlaabe ele go nyatsa my forefathers. Then I might as well go find Kgabo and listen to what he has to say…
