A letter to Koma
Lewanika Timothy | Tuesday November 4, 2025 13:55
Forgive me for writing so late. My elders in the newsroom have failed to update you, so I in my youth, must bear the burdensome yoke of briefing the old socialist about the new republic. I tremble to name those who should have long penned this missive, but in the spirit of Puo Phaa , Victor Baatweng, Ryder Gabathuse and company have been sleeping on the job.
It took decades of struggle, party splits, and stubborn faith, but the seed you planted has sprouted through the earth. The flag you carried when it was unfashionable to speak of socialism now flies above the State House.
I don’t know if you would want the good or bad news first. But let me be courteous and dash out the good first.
First the BNF is in power under a coalition movement. When I read your texts and speeches especially from the early formative years of the BNF, it dawns on me that you have always wanted a united front against capitalism, the BDP and all its ideals. You wanted the peasants, as Marx calls them, from all walks of society to unite against bourgeoisie tendencies.
The coalition being the Umbrella for Democratic Change (UDC) is no novel political ideology. It is now led by Advocate Duma Boko, a student of the noble profession and a son of an ordinary working-class couple. He is a man of sharp wit and a fierce debater who rattles the feathers of the nation he now leads time and again with his ideas. He speaks beautifully, Koma, but the nation needs him to deliver all the promises laden in his impeccably articulated speeches.
The expectation is that he, a son of the working class, will understand how the mere members of our society are catching hell far at the margins of society.
He is assisted by Baledzi Gaolathe’s son, Ndaba, a well-trained economist and a humble man just as his father. He also trots down the beaten path his father once treaded, as Minister of Finance. He is accused of being too soft spoken but he is an intelligent man whom the nations will appreciate with time.
Fronta as you knew it has changed drastically and don’t get offended by this. That ragged band of peasants, teachers, and restless intellectuals who met under trees and dusty verandas, has evolved and has now been replaced by lux venues, marked by sheer opulence. Comrades now arrive in SUVs, their watches heavy, their laughter louder than the chants of the old days.
Recently your party met in the hoodoo ground of Palapye. Socialists came dripping in opulence, you would be convinced it was a meeting of capitalists who own and control the means of production. I guess where I am driving to is that Fronta is no longer looking like the struggle it once advocated to end. It’s now a clubof rulers. Others of course have come to stray the party away from its Pamphlet 1 values and use it for the ill gain of their selfish motives.
But times have changed. Boko himself has said a leader can’t uplift people from poverty if he himself looks like their poverty, so Fronta is an evolving political party.
I must get to the crust of the main reason of writing this letter before the ink in my pen dries up. Koma, there is a financial drought that has besieged the nation. It is an uphill battle for Boko and Ndaba to climb, they need your wisdom. Shortly after your death, the world underwent a global financial crisis and Botswana was not sparred. But the nation quickly recovered.
Now our national accounts are drying up, there is no money to buy medicines, increase worker salaries and our people are growing discontent against the political leaders of this country. There is an unrest of sorts that now brews in the hearts of the young people of this nation. The anger in the political atmosphere is soo thick.
You would recognise this anger, Koma it’s the same that once filled the streets in your day. The young are restless again.
The main problem is that diamonds are not being bought in international markets. I remember how you long called for mineral diversification from the times when you were in parliament. But the BDP fellows dragged their feet, now our commodity is becoming like any other stones littered across the body of the earth. Diamond prices have fallen and the cost of mining these diamonds is getting too expensive.
Eish, the coffers have run dry Koma. The spillover effects are too great to ignore. School children don’t have books to write on compromising their right to education. There is no medicine in health care stations and our people may start fading away like the late 90s when HIV/AIDS almost wiped our nation away.
People now blame the political class; they wanted change and are not getting it. Reason would suggest we give them time to diversify the economy but who dares tell a hungry man to wait a day longer. Things are bad Koma.
There is now talk of ending subsidies for electricity, rationing social welfare and limiting the work of the state as an equaliser. Socialism may not see the light of the day under this government.
But they must remember your words Koma and continue to implement. Government is not for boys anyway.
I must stop here and will take it upon myself to keep writing to you. Please tell Gomolemi Motswaledi that there is a blank paper in my drawer that I will soon take out and write to him as well. He must not be jealous of you, after all you are his elder.