Not for the first time, the issue of just how opposition parties in Botswana can position themselves to become a viable alternative is heavily permeating our national political discourse.
At the centre of it all is the ongoing courtship between Umbrella for Democratic Change and the Botswana Congress Party.
The Umbrella for Democratic Change, it now seems, wants to get into power at all costs in 2019 ÔÇô even if it means setting aside all known conventional norms.
The Botswana Congress Party, for their part looks up to joining UDC as the only way to stem the ongoing onslaught on it by the ruling Botswana Democratic Party.
The BDP is on the rampage, literally working and deploying resources at decimating the BCP from the face of earth.
In practice politics do not always work in a mechanical way.
Which is why inside the BCP there are still those who are fiercely against their party joining the UDC.
And inside the UDC there are those who are horrified at the preparedness of their leaders to accommodate BCP, including offering BCP leader a position among the top three.
These are the people who if they had their way, there would be no negotiations between UDC and BCP.
The two groups are hardliners in their own right.
At the UDC these are people who have still not forgiven the BCP for not joining them ahead of 2014.
These are the people who want BCP humiliated. They would rather have BCP apply for UDC membership than allow it a platform to negotiate entry.
At the BCP these are the people who sincerely believe that what their party is going through is a temporary setback, and that the better days still are ahead.
The truth lie somewhere in the middle.
At the UDC too many members are simply trying to keep track of their leadership. And not a lot of things, especially those that pertain to their party’s courtship with the BCP make sense to them.
Ordinary members are appalled at the manner in which BCP is being treated as an equal to UDC, a party that is a conglomerate of three political parties ÔÇô a majority of them much bigger than BCP even as individual entities.
It would be an understatement to say the UDC/BCP courtship is replete with internal contradictions. But none is more glaring than the preparedness of UDC leadership to treat themselves as an equal to BCP, forgetting in the process that UDC is a coterie of three political parties with no less than seventeen Members of Parliament while the BCP is a single entity with two Members of Parliament.
The eagerness by UDC leaders to embrace the BCP seems to take for granted the uneasy peace holding inside their own loosely wrought arrangement.
That peace, it should never be forgotten is a result of hard and potentially risky compromises, chief of which has been a persistence by Ndaba Gaolathe never to challenge for the top leadership spot.
This notwithstanding the fact that Gaolathe’s outfit, the Botswana Movement for Democracy has the largest number of MPs within the alliance.
Recently the BCP has been having a bad run ÔÇô literally. The Botswana Democratic Party is working at swallowing wholesome, or at the very least disintegrating them into dysfunctional bits and pieces.
And so far the BDP strategy seems to be working, almost seamlessly.
For BCP strategists, a hasty membership inside the UDC would offer some sanctuary against the BDP onslaught.
The trouble though is that as is so often the case, this time around the same BCP strategists are too happy to punch above their weight.
For them any deal that does not etch their leader to a second spot inside the UDC would be a bad deal.
And in a stealth way that is already starting to play out in some shared public events where as part of protocol BCP’s Dumelang Saleshando is often furtively sold as the hierarchy’s number two ahead of Gaolathe.
The entreaties by BCP strategists are unlikely to endear their party to UDC hardliners.
Additionally the timid acquiescence by a section of the UDC leadership hell-bent on loading on the BCP is likely to spark popular revolt inside the alliance.
Outside of the courtship, this none rules-based entry of the BCP into the UDC is already music to the ruling BDP.
They like the anarchy that this experiment is almost inevitably going to descend into.
Listening to the BDP ÔÇô and they are not far from the truth ÔÇô one gets an apocalyptic image of the opposition were a mechanical merger of convenience to be attempted between the UDC and the BCP.
To my mind the Botswana Congress Party is still to fully internalize the inner workings of alliance politics.
Otherwise their strategists would not be so obsessed with cutting corners for their leader to make sure he becomes UDC deputy leader at all costs ÔÇô including going as far as to say if push comes to shove then the UDC should have two deputies.
Alliance politics calls for immensely hard compromises the kind of which Ndaba Gaolathe has made to forgo strict rule books that under normal circumstances would have made him the top man at UDC.
