Virtually all the time that he takes pot shots at the government, former president Ian Khama ritualistically aims at a single target – his nemesis and successor, President Mokgweetsi Masisi. Khama hardly ever attacks the party that Masisi leads, the Botswana Democratic Party (BDP). This raises the question: if Masisi is somehow no longer BDP president, would Khama go back to the party, seeing that he seems to have no problem with it?
Last month, Khama’s party, the Botswana Patriotic Front (BPF), joined the Umbrella for Democratic Change (UDC), an opposition collective that was formed in 2012. The other members of UDC are the Botswana National Front (BNF), the Botswana Congress Party (BCP) and the Botswana Peoples Party (BPP). Having fallen out with the BNF, the BCP suspended its participation in the UDC and every indication is that it is on its way out.
Sunday Standard asked UDC’s spokesperson, Moeti Mohwasa, whether the opposition has considered the possibility of Khama returning to the BDP if it ever happens that Masisi is out of the picture.“The thought has never crossed our minds,” responded Mohwasa but adding in the next breath that such eventuality seems unlikely because “he has invested so much in the UDC.”
Khama has indeed invested a lot in the UDC, both materially and otherwise. During the 2019 general election, he campaigned long and hard for UDC candidates, in some cases using rented air transportation. After opposition parties cobbled together an election pact for post-2019 bye-elections, Khama, who is still popular with some despite a dictatorial stint as president, barnstormed through the country. In most cases, his effort paid off and opposition candidates notched win after win.
However, Khama’s brand of opposition is a peculiar one. It is commonplace to attack both a party and its leader but for ever since he and Masisi fell out, he has confined himself to the leader. To some, that is an indication that Khama is still BDP at heart and that there might lie down the road, a future in which BPF dissolves back into BDP when Masisi ceases to be the target of Khama’s ire. Mohwasa doesn’t share this view and points to precedent of BDP members who left the party and never went back. He gives the examples of the Botswana Movement for Democracy as a party which has members who left the BDP but never went back.
As for Khama being on Masisi’s case, Mohwasa says that UDC can’t dictate to its affiliates what issues to address and how such issues should be addressed. He hastens to add that Khama is justified in his ceaseless attacks on Masisi because the latter also does the same thing.
Related to this issue is the question of whether BPF is a genuine political party or a vengeance project. Asked whether he shares the view that the party exists solely for purposes of settling scores, Mohwasa doesn’t give a direct response. In making a general statement about personal differences between individuals being par for the course in politics, he gives a parallel with what happened in the BNF during the presidency of the now deceased party founder, Dr. Kenneth Koma. He says that there were personal differences between Koma and some of the people who ended up breaking away to form the BCP. He feels that the latter parallel is never highlighted when the issue of Khama continually attacking Masisi is brought up.
BPF’s association with UDC is remarkable in one other respect. Ideologically, the party is the odd man out. Both BNF and BCP have the same root, the BPP, which was formed in the 1960s with a very strong socialist leaning. Koma left the party to form the BNF and decades later, BCP would be formed out of the BNF. Ideology is important because the public policies that a party either proposes or implements are drawn from the ideology that a party subscribes to. Ideological differences necessarily result in dissimilarities in policy perspective.
Sunday Standard asked Mohwasa whether there are any ideological similarities between the old (BNF, BCP and BNF) UDC and BPF. He prefaced his response proper by highlighting the dichotomy of minimum/maximum programme of socialist thinking. The minimum programme consists of a series of demands for immediate reforms while the maximum programme consists of a series of demands aimed at achieving unalloyed socialism. Mohwasa says that at this point, UDC’s sights are set on a minimum programme for basic things like creating employment, raising the standard of living and providing adequate healthcare. He asserts that as presently constituted, UDC members are able to find common ground on these issues.
While he accepts that ideology co-relates strongly with public policy, Mohwasa hastens to add that “what matters at the end of the day is putting food on the table and how best that can be achieved.
”The other point that he makes is that even within the UDC itself – as within individual parties themselves, there is no ideological cohesion. His elaboration of that point is that there are ideological differences between the BNF and the BPP as there are between the latter and BCP. He adds that within the BNF itself, there is no such cohesion.
However, it is important to note that even within this matrix is BPF’s lack of a policy character. From its formation in 2019 to date, the party has never made any detailed policy pronouncement on any issue. Far from illuminating its stance, doing so would put the party in a difficult position because some would ask why Khama didn’t implement those policies when he was still president.
