Optimism has carried the Umbrella for Democratic Change too far – much farther than anybody could have dreamt even in their wildest of dreams.
But optimism alone, it must now be clear to many, will not bring the UDC into power.
That will require functional structures and more importantly a united leadership.
Those structures should ultimately be accountable to members, who as it is are the contracting parties.
In short, the UDC should become rules-based.
The UDC campaign in 2019 was for example created to make people feel good about themselves.
The campaign created hype and deliberately skirted around more difficult issues.
For example, the UDC leadership did not confront the issue of dealing with intractable problems like how they were going to finance their vision – P3000 minimum wages, 100 000 jobs in the first few months in power and several other unexplained utopia-like statements.
It is the way the UDC leader, Duma Boko wants it.
Boko, it is important to point out from the onset is a very likeable man. He is good company. He is charismatic. In private he is self-effacing and even shy – a direct opposite of the public persona he likes to project about himself.
He is often too trusting which in politics could prove suicidal.
As the last two General elections would have shown, Boko speaks big with all his world surrounded by grandeur.
But he is a bad manager and even worse as an administrator. But never take him lightly.
He is exceedingly clever, but can also be willy and even cunning.
As a leader of a modern political party, he is terribly flawed.
Other than UDC, Boko is also leader of the Botswana National Front.
Thus, it is not by chance that the UDC laisser-faire is a direct image of the BNF.
Boko’s enduring management style is to postpone dealing with difficult problems, with the hope that such problems will on their own go away.
As a result, both the UDC and also the BNF have over time avoided facing up and dealing with real issues of the real world in which we live.
That world demands big organisations like UDC and BNF to hold regular meetings, to produce reports, to produce position papers and also policy documents.
Scheduled meetings are a must as are drawing up agendas.
When it comes to organizational nuances, Boko does not even make pretentions.
For example since the covid pandemic started, both the UDC and the BNF have said pretty very little about covid even as so much has gone wrong because of it.
This is the same climate under which he accepted the Botswana Congress Party into UDC.
Anybody who tried to advise for protocol was rundown, with the onslaught led by the usual suspects; Boko’s dogs of war.
Ndaba Gaolathe, then effectively Boko’s deputy in the UDC bore the most gruesome brunt of it all.
The BCP had an easy ride into the UDC because Boko in his world, he could only get to the State House with BCP help.
Now the BCP wants Boko to behave like a 21st century leader. He will obviously have none of it. He has never been used to what the BCP is demanding.
The BCP is arguably Botswana’s most organized political party. It beats even the ruling Botswana Democratic Party when it comes to organisational systems.
They are relenting when it comes to getting what they want, including meeting own targets. And very mechanical in their precision.
Their long term ambition is to win state power on their own and under their own terms.
The party can be irrevocably ruthless towards anything that stands on the way of realising this solemn ambition.
Joining the UDC was for the BCP a temporary stop gap – a result of setbacks encountered at the 2014 General elections.
A decision to join the UDC was a tactical albeit temporary retreat from long term goals.
It was what Kenneth Koma once called a minimum programme.
In the presidential debate a few days into the 2019 General elections, a totally unprepared electorate was left aghast by Duma Boko’s comments.
Many interpreted the comments as either reckless, arrogant or outright insulting.
His campaign never recovered.
Had the UDC won in 2019 there was a real possibility that BCP could collapse a government simply by withdrawing from it – for whatever reason.
In Boko, the BCP has identified the UDC Achilles heel.
And like a bull dog, they will stick to it until the whole edifice collapses.
How many times has UDC executive committee met since the last General Elections?
Has the UDC conducted any election post mortem?
For the BCP the behaviour of Duma Boko where he refuses to account at both the BNF and the UDC is laughable. That is not how things are done at BCP.
“We should be worried that such a person wants to become the Head of State. Will he call cabinet meetings once he is State President? There is no guarantee,” a BCP founder recently said to me.
He is in a way right.
It is partly that conduct that cost UDC elections.
Boko’s rhetoric – in public and in private – has not gotten better with time.
He behaves like a man with a hurt ego – just as Adolf Hitler was. And that is very dangerous in a leader.
Not only has he centralized control of both the BNF and the UDC, he has also essentially privatized the two.
As the UDC leader he has stubbornly refused to recognize known democratic norms.
At a general membership level there is no shortage of dismay, save for the few thuggish loyalists who are few in number but shrill in tone.
This does not only put at question the UDC and BNF democratic credentials, but the two’s moral standing as well.
How will these two behave once in power?
Will they even hold cabinet meetings? Or they might push for cancelling of General elections?
These are all valid questions.
And they will be red meat to BNF and UDC detractors.
It is difficult to see how this position can be sustainable in a raw electoral mood that will be coming in 2024.
A friend from the Ruling Botswana Democratic Party says Batswana should count themselves lucky that the current UDC crisis has happened when UDC was still in opposition.
For him it is ample proof that contrary to impressions created by UDC leadership, the party is not oven-ready to govern.
In power, such a crisis could at the bare minimum lead to a collapse of government, he says.
A lot of it is just sheer personality differences. There are also strong temptations to polarize UDC along familiar political tribes; BNF vs BCP. Sadly, leaders are giving in to division instead of unity which will require compromise and also forbearance.
The UDC leader’s attitude every time he is called to account is staggering. It has put a lot of wind in the sails of his detractors.
Sympathetic watchers are slowly beginning to look at UDC as not only unreliable, but a liability too.
At UDC inception, BNF was the natural leader.
For individual contracting parties, UDC has always provided a sense of safety in numbers.
But now the whole rancour is casting doubt on that too.
It is not clear why even today some in the BNF see their party as a natural leader of the UDC even as circumstances have so drastically changed against the BNF.
In their social media spats with their BCP counterparts, BNF activists do not want to engage with underlying facts. Instead, they are vaguely appealing to sentiment – like saying there should be unity without saying how that unity can be achieved when Duma Boko does not call NEC meetings for example and when he does not attend meetings when they are called.
Chilly Kgoroba who had entered parliament under the ticket of the UDC in 2014 said this week that Boko never attended caucus meetings.
He said the leader also skipped parliament.
Kgoroba’s utterances have been a huge body blow to both Boko and his defenders.
Nobody in the BNF has even come close to engaging with Kgoroba.
Instead, they are throwing typical epithets at him – clearly to scare and then silence him and others who might dare to speak against Boko.
If these people are feared now when they are in opposition and with no power, what becomes of them when they have state power and all the infrastructure that comes with that power?
The BCP motives from day one have not been the cleanest. And here the BNF activists are absolutely right. But the BNF general behaviour over the recent past has been reprehensible.
Party structures are dead exactly because there is no guidance at leadership.
Almost all BNF troubles are due to outright incompetence of leadership.
Yet members do not want to acknowledge much less highlight theses incompetencies.
UDC needs renewal. Leaders are missing an opportunity, exactly the same way BNF leaders refused to heed calls for renewal a few years ago.
There is evidence that the ruling BDP leadership is wandering far and far away from real life issues.
There is, sadly no evidence to suggest that UDC leadership are any ready to fill the void.
People are left groping in the dark for leadership alternatives that does not exist.
The debate between BNF and BCP activists on social media is badly polarised.
Pure tribalism! The BCP is going for a moral high ground. The BNF is aiming for the hills.
The BDP can only watch and smile. What an unsolicited gift!
Talking ideology, extremism and tribalism today will not win votes.
This is because demographics are shifting strongly away from political party card carrying membership and to people who have no political attachment but are attracted to anybody who speaks their language and addresses their needs.
The UDC and also the BNF should listen carefully going forward. That was how Mokgweetsi Masisi won the last elections.
