Officially, the Botswana Congress Party (BCP) is still part of the Umbrella for Democratic Change (UDC). On the Bophirima Ward ground however, UDC and BCP are two very different entities. In one part of the Ward, Mankie Sekete is a Gaborone City Council candidate under the UDC ticket in a bye-election that takes places this coming Saturday. Peter Mogapi of BCP, which is a member of UDC, is vying for the same seat.
That might surprise some but a press statement that was put out last month by Mpho Pheko, the Publicity and Information Secretary of the Botswana Congress Party, makes a quite interesting revelation.
“We are sad to state that UDC President Duma Boko has not been available for any proposed meetings of the UDC NEC since the last meeting on July 2021 at Palapye,” she wrote in the March 12, 2022, referring by “NEC” to the National Executive Committee. “All decisions pertaining to the coalition have been taken unilaterally without consulting cooperating partners.”
The import of this particular assertion is that the UDC collective and its leader were pulling in different directions months before Sekete and Mogapi started doing the same thing. The NEC that met without Boko certainly made resolutions but as Pheko says in her statement, Boko was making unilateral decisions without consulting NEC, the structure through which consulting partners transact their cooperation. UDC is also pulling in an opposing direction against language: “unilaterally” contradicts the “Democratic” in the “UDC” name and shows that the party has yet to institutionalise democracy in its own processes. In not holding a national congress to reconfigure its leadership, UDC has shown that it has little to no appetite for democratic change. BCP has staked its claim to Bophirima because it says it was “allocated” the ward in 2019. Conversely, BNF has contested use of that word.
Way after the bye-election, Bophirima will remain central in the UDC project. At a superficial level, the results will be used to argue for or against the project. To some, a BCP win will certainly send the message that the party can survive and thrive outside UDC. On the basis of such belief and oblivious to the fact that Bophirima is but one ward among hundreds, some will advocate/agitate for exiting the coalition. Similarly, some will interpret a UDC win as an indication that the collective doesn’t need BCP. The reality though is that there are many more factors that don’t lend themselves to simple interpretation.
The reality is that election results from 1965 to date show that these two entities need each other, that the opposition needs to work together. The problem is that the UDC project, as all previous iterations, was misconceived and for that reason, is doomed to fail if it is not knocked into shape.
The attraction of UDC to most is solely based on the fact that if it builds adequate numerical strength, it would overwhelm the BDP and form the next government. This government would immediately become one of the most chaotic in Africa because as we are seeing with Sekete and Magosi (as well as with Boko and the UDC NEC) not everybody will be pulling in the same direction. While parties need numerical strength to win an election, they need internal cohesion to govern. UDC is no position to be talking about taking over official power when it has failed to build cohesion for the period of time that it has existed.
Truth be told, the real UDC is BCP and BNF. The third partner, the Botswana People’s Party, is an inconsequential provincial party but is important to keep in the UDC for symbolic purposes. Voters want a united opposition and BPP’s inclusion in UDC is important in that regard. Ideologically, UDC has a fairly high level of cohesion because of the history: the BPP begot the BNF which begot the BCP. However, the party needs much more than ideological cohesion to be able to form a durable government.
Pheko raises an issue (never once refuted by the BNF) that portends serious trouble down the road: that Boko hasn’t attended NEC meetings since July last year. What the latter means is that UDC’s Vice President and BCP President, Dumelang Saleshando, is the one who has been chairing meetings in that period of time. The irony is that while Saleshando can’t contest for the UDC presidency, he is exercising important roles of the presidency. If Boko doesn’t attend meetings, that raises the question of whether he would be attend (and chair) cabinet meetings as president.
That Pheko had to mention Boko’s absence at NEC meetings is an indication that BCP is unhappy about this state of affairs. The time period she references shows that this problem has been going on for far too long – which raises questions about the UDC’s ability to resolve issues timeously. For now this is a party problem but if UDC assumes power, it will become a national problem.
BCP and BNF also have diametrically opposed organisational cultures. Saleshando was unchallenged at the party’s last national elective congress. Even if he had, it seems highly unlikely that his opponent would have been viciously discredited and horrendously insulted. The opposite is what happens in the BNF if anyone wants to challenge Boko for the presidency. For some time now, a mostly digital army called Fear Fokol (“fear nothing”) has dedicated itself to firewalling Boko against any sort of challenge or legitimate criticism. Fear Fokol’s fearlessness is such that age, which is revered across Botswana’s indigenous cultures, means nothing to its members. A BNF activist reveals that in one UDC WhatsApp group, a BPP leader, “was insulted like a child by people young enough to be his grandchildren.” Some see the silence of the BNF leadership on Fear Fokol’s antics as a wink and a nod. A female BNF leader has openly advocated for the use of violence to destabilise the country but the party leadership never condemned her. On the other hand, BCP has never publicly embraced violence – at least in the quasi-official fashion that the BNF has.
As was the case ahead of the 2019 general election, UDC members relate differently to former president Ian Khama. The BNF is the most receptive to him and his party, the Botswana Patriotic Front. BCP is a more complex story: some of its members have embraced Khama while others have rejected him. Among those in the former category are MPs that Khama campaigned for in 2019. These MPs have been forced to return the favour by never criticising Khama for what he did when he was president. This means that the MPs can’t realistically speak of a disastrous 56 years of BDP rule but of only 46 years> That is because they have to subtract the 10 years that Khama was in power. Khama is certainly going to want to play a key role in a UDC government that he helps put in power. The differences in how BNF and BCP relate to him will come to the fore and become deeply problematic.
Bophirima Ward has illuminated weaknesses that prove that, for now at least, a UDC government is not a viable proposition. Thankfully though, 2024 is still too far away and the party can still work out the kinks in its internal processes. However, if the focus is confined to building numerical strength, the party would find on its first day in power that such strength is necessary for winning elections only, not governing.
