The latest installment in what promises to be a long line of piecemeal cabinet reshuffles has given the most eloquent expression of the difficulties that President Ian Khama is going through.
Patrick Masimolole has been appointed assistant minister in the presidency while Edwin Batshu is acting minister of defence.
With regard to Masimolole, the dynamics at play are as clear as blue sky.
It is when one gets to Batshu that the whole thing gets buried down under a thick cloud of mysterious fog.
Only a week ago, it was unimaginable that Patrick Masimolole would be in cabinet while Vincent Seretse remained in the cold ÔÇô forgotten, humiliated and, to some extent, despised by those who in the first instance lured him to leave business for politics.
It is not an unusual course of action for a sitting President confronted with a backbench rebellion of the scale that faces Khama to give in and start making appointments that so blatantly appease and placate the insurgents.
But still the decision to appoint Masimolole is an embarrassing one.
With the exception of Vice President Mompati Merafhe, I cannot think of a clearer and more obvious beneficiary of an internal ruling party dynamics that are currently holding a State President hostage.
For the record, Masimolole is an excessively unpredictable man.
His intemperate behaviour is now legendary.
It’s possible Khama has figured leaving him at arms-length any further has become a very risky adventure the President can ill afford, especially during these volatile times.
Since his decision to leave the BDP for BMD and back, all in a space of less than two weeks, his loyalty can no longer be taken for a given.
His soul, like that of his closest travel mate, Phillip Makgalemele, is not for sale but for rent ÔÇô and to the highest bidder.
It will be interesting to see what on his part Makgalemele gets in return for exactly the same behaviour that has profited Masimolole so immensely.
Given his famed lust for a seat in cabinet, Masimolole’s appointment as junior minister is the most potent guarantee that he will not rock the edifice.
But just why is Edwin Batshu appointed on acting capacity?
What could be the reasons that a gifted, talented and quality member of parliament like Vincent Seretse, who got into parliament under the auspices of a special dispensation, could be allowed to rot in the shadows when there is no doubt that cabinet, the President and the entire nation stand to profit from his skills?
Those are lofty questions I have no answers to.
Cabinet appointments are the prerogative of the President.
In fact, all ministers, including the Vice President, serve at the pleasure of the President and I like it that way.
But still, Seretse’s absence in a cabinet which boasts such people like Botlhogile Tshireletso and Patrick Masimolole, remains to be clarified.
While Khama’s reshuffles have become a charade, there is a far more serious problem confronting our politics than the concerns of just how capriciously cabinet is appointed.
Of greater concern is the alienation of those with skills and would want to join politics to make a contribution. As things stand, politics is no place for those who have the ambition to succeed and make a difference in other people’s lives.
The trade is fast becoming an exclusive domain for the turn-coats who are able to threaten the President with a spectre of defections in case they don’t get promoted into cabinet.
President Khama has no choice but to come to terms with his lot.
He exposed himself by breaking the BDP and driving away talent into the BMD abode simply because he felt too insecure to share a tent with them. He has now become an easy picking for the predators that have not the slightest shame begging him to get themselves included in his cabinet.
For those talented but proud MPs like VT Seretse hoping to make a contribution, politics has become a bleak prospect indeed.
In a funny way, the President has the powers to do as he pleases but is unable to use them because he fears a backlash.
The answer is not turning cabinet into an appeasement ground for disenchanted careerists who hobble from one party to the other and back every day. Rather it lies in making cabinet a service centre central to the lives of ordinary people.
It may well be that President Khama is using the spectre of cabinet reshuffles to feed into the hopes of MPs so that a semblance of peace holds inside his party.
But then greater is the risk that soon cabinet will become irrelevant if obvious talents like VT Seretse are left out because they are too proud to lobby, nay threaten the president with defections.
