With heavy hearts, Batswana are finally getting to accept the painful fact that Minister of Foreign Affairs, Pelonomi Venson-Moitoi did not get the much coveted post to become Chairman of the African Union Commission.
For a while it looked so close and yet proved so far.
However hard she tried, Venson could not get the required number of votes.
To her credit, Venson put up an efficient and well organized campaign.
But in the end it was simply not enough. There were just too many obstacles on her way, many of which she could not easily have foreseen when she started off.
In the end there were just too many abstentions, especially by West Africa; an exceedingly important political and economic part of the continent.
Their reason for abstention will prove much more difficult to swallow than the fact that our Venson did not make it: They say of all the candidates, none was high profile enough to be considered a suitable leader of the African Union Commission.
And they are in good company.
Former South African president, Thabo Mbeki is known to have vehemently, albeit privately expressed his own reservations about giving the position to Botswana.
And in the African continent, especially in West Africa, Mbeki still rules the roost.
And that is not all.
Under its current incarnation, Mbeki considers the African Union to be his own creation.
And not without a reason! Throughout his presidency, Mbeki staked his leadership on reviving the African Union. And he ultimately paid the highest price for it when he was shunted out of power because he was considered to be spending excessively too much time tending to African matters and less to that of his country.
To many people, Thabo Mbeki often cuts the image of an eccentric professor who, based on his immense intellect is not only out of touch with the world but also with practical realities. That unfortunately betrays his genuine and passionate faith in the future of the African continent ÔÇô a feeling that is unparalleled.
If we think Thabo Mbeki is a spent bullet, we are wrong.
Without his explicit support we cannot have a place at Africa’s top table. And we have just tasted the ire of his power when it comes to African matters.
At issue here is not Venson’s experience and qualifications.
Also not at issue is certainly not her CV, which by any standards is impeccable. Rather it has everything to do with lingering doubts ÔÇô right or wrong, that other African countries have about Botswana’s Africanist credentials.
Our foreign policy posture has literally forced other African countries to conspire against us on many issues.
As we speak word is already out that Mbeki has convinced former President of Tanzania Jakaya Kikwete to avail himself in January for the second round.
A former President of an African powerhouse, Kikwete might just be the high profile candidate that the abstainers hinted they wanted.
This will make it exceedingly difficult for Venson.
Rather behaving as though her life depended on it, Venson should withdraw. She did her best, but in the end her best was not enough.
Rather than brooding in victimhood, minister Venson’s failure to get Africa’s top job should allow us as a country an opportunity to take a fresh look at ourselves ÔÇô especially what our values are. Venson’s misfortune should be an opportunity for us to evaluate our foreign policy.
There is more than enough evidence to point out that as a country we are living in the past.
In a tragic way, we have become victims of our past success.
Against all evidence, we are reluctant to accept that times have moved ahead without us.
We seem to be too stuck in history, consumed by nostalgia over our past successes and totally unable to adjust to new and emerging realities, much less face up to the fact that we are no longer what we used to be, at least in the eyes of many African countries.
There is a whiff of complacency in our snobbish attitude towards other African countries.
Admittedly, Botswana still controls some international clout. But it is a leftover from our past rather than a contemporary creation.
As a country, Botswana has never been accustomed to rejection.
We are used to being praised, to being courted and being extolled around the continent and indeed the world as a beacon of democracy.
And when we get rejected, as it happened in Kigali, where Venson was our public face it hits us as a culture shock.
We are struggling to accept much less make sense of the new circumstances under which we find ourselves.
And that has been clear in our public response towards what happened to Venson.
Behaving like spoiled children from wealthy families we have developed a debilitating sense of entitlement that invariably drives us to throw tantrums when things don’t go our way.
It matters a lot that our Head of State should look at himself as an equal to other African Heads of State.
A few years ago President Ian Khama chose not to accompany other African Heads of State to Washington after an invitation to the White House by Barack Obama.
That naturally rubbed the Americans the wrong way. One does not snub an American President, and get away with it so easily. It was not an isolated incident.
The cardinal sin in so far as it affects the African Union is that President Khama has chosen never to attend the Summits of this important African body.
There can be no explanation, no justification for it.
It really does matter that in response other African countries have started to look at us as snobs.
Last year Attorney General Dr Athaliah Molokomme tried to join the Executive Committee of the International Criminal Court.
She did not meet the mark.
Subsequent to that Mmasekgowa Masire-Mwamba tried to be head of the Commonwealth. She too did not make the mark.
And these are two of this country’s finest. Their failures have nothing to with their personal inadequacies. Their crimes, if one might call it so is that they come from a country that no longer plays ball on international matters.
We seem to gloat too much on the fact that we are always the first to pay our subscription fees to these organisations.
We seem to forget that global politics have much to it that than paying subscription fees.
It entails networking, opening formal and back channels of communications, and also frequently deploying the chief diplomat to lobby on issues that matter.
At the moment we are not doing those.
We are out of sync. And the sooner we get back into tune with others the warmer the international stage will become for us.
