Botswana’s opposition is literally on the run.
Not only is Ian Khama rendering them irrelevant, he is, hands down, beating them at their traditional home ground of welfare politics.
Stripped of all their pretensions and traditional policy outposts, every opposition party is already bracing itself for a big defeat that is fast coming their way.
Khama has put back the BDP on a fearsome fighting pedestal and the worst may still be to come.
We are fast sliding into a de facto one party state. It’s a very ugly prospect yet, by every account, that seems to be where we are headed.
With so much in their hands and besieged from every angle, its difficult to see how a ragtag of what passes for our opposition political parties could redeem itself as to be able to stand up, fight back and reclaim the lost ground.
We should all be worried that Botswana has taken this course.
Ian Khama has shown that, in politics, ideas matter just as much as personality.
He has both.
From day one, he struck an amazing note with the ordinary people; sparking a popularity-inspired love relationship that Festus Mogae could only dream of.
It all started when he started announcing a breathtaking raft of policy reforms.
The truth of the matter though is that it is Khama’s personality (and not his policies) that is doing more wonders for him and his party.
The man’s attachment to the masses is spreading doom in the opposition ranks.
His presence of stature is throwing them helter-skelter.
As the BDP rejoice and celebrate their fortunes, we must as a nation pause and reflect if this is what we had always wanted for ourselves. We must ask ourselves if this is what we always desired for our country. I don’t think so.
A myth is fast getting perched on our national psyche that there is no alternative to Khama and his BDP.
Sure the opposition has surrendered their right to the claim of an alternative power base, but it would be irresponsible as to be criminal for the civic society to also relinquish that right to the BDP.
In the midst of all this Khamarite madness, some of us have to remain detached as to be skeptical, otherwise we risk becoming a nation of intellectual dwarfs.
If the civic society also collapses under the spell of the Khama project, as the risk seems ever so likely, then the next natural target to be conquered by the man’s supposed immortality will, as a matter of fact, have to be the judiciary.
By its very nature, democracy survives and thrives on the basis of assumptions that there exist alternatives and potentials to the incumbent government.
As a nation, we must never buy the myth that there is no alternative to Ian Khama.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with singing praise poems for Ian Khama, but in keeping with our democratic traditions, another track has to be opened for Khama’s detractors to also blow their whistles against the Khama-crazy project.
Once it becomes a frowned upon offence to even question the utility of the incumbent President’s policies, then we are headed for a one party state, resplendent with all its follies and dictatorships.
I have no reason to doubt, let alone suspect, Khama’s motives.
I have not the slightest doubt about Khama’s anxiety and sincerity to take this country to another level, but I am deeply worried that having created so much popular excitement, his raft of policies is likely to hold him hostage to fortune, especially in the event of an economic downturn, which looks like a forgone conclusion if world and regional events are anything to go by.
We should never lose sight of the simple fact that Botswana got where it is because of economic prudence.
As former President Festus Mogae so succinctly put it in his last State of the Nation Address, political expediency should never be allowed to dictate policy commitments, let alone direction.
Compared to all his three predecessors, Ian Khama seems to be a captive of two distinct weaknesses that he has to overcome as a matter of urgency.
First, he has to overcome self-doubt and come to terms with his unassailable popularity.
In other words, he has to stop trying to be everything to everyone.
Second, but still related to the first, Ian Khama has to resist his seemingly uncontrollable obsession to disorientate and dismantle opposition parties which, I venture, has goaded him to announce a clutch of reforms and policies all of which came within days if not hours of each other.
A damning proof of the haste with which the policies were made is that almost all of them are not only vague but also thin on detail.
My fear is that as the saying goings, the devil may actually be in the detail.
Once again, the health of every democracy depends on the open and tolerant debates among the citizens.
It is, however, a sign of decay that since April 1, it has become more or less an offence to openly differ with this government’s policies.
It would be unsavoury of me to blame it all on Khama.
There is also a selfish and opportunistic dimension to it.
A good number of our citizens are in it not because they believe in the efficacy of the project, but because they hope to win material favours from Ian Khama and those surrounding him.
Selfishness and opportunism are the twin evils of a plague eating up our national bloodstream.
People are scared of expressing their doubts for fear of limiting and, in some worse cases altogether, destroying their ambitions and careers. To endear themselves to the master, everyone in the country is singing a Khama chorus. Not surprisingly, the tone is shrillest among the middle class. It is utter madness. It is also the surest way of creating a dictatorship. If there is any lesson we can learn from Robert Mugabe, it is that dictators are made not born. Mugabe was not always what he has since become.
When all is said and done, all of these problems can effortlessly be traced down to a quarrelsome opposition that chose to fight itself when it had the choice and opportunity to suggest itself as a second power center given the unprecedented gesture of public goodwill their failed cooperation talks elicited a few years ago.
