Hit lists and self recruitment, what to believe?
Michael Dingake | Tuesday May 20, 2014 12:56
Batswana are a sick population, sick in body, sick in mind. Through the Princess Marina corridors I was recognised, greeted and engaged in conversation on the numerous ailments and conditions which afflict us together within and outside the corridors. Foremost physical affliction and subject of conversation, in Botswana is no longer HIV/AIDS the killer disease of the recent past, rather Sugar Diabetes, High Blood pressure, Cancer and for oldies, arthritis. Mentally, this being anno domini 2014, the fever is, general elections.
This being the final week of supplementary registration period for October elections, my topic after ascertaining why my fellow outpatients, many of them of working age, were not at work, but idling in the hospital corridors, was to find out whether comrades-in-physical suffering had registered for October elections? Before my question could be answered and adequately debated, because believe it or not, the question, to vote or not, is not the simplest question to answer on the eve of October 2014.
Voices are overheard denouncing the elections’ farce from several quarters. Besides political leaders, prospective candidates for the coming elections seem to have contracted some chaotic disease of ditching party affiliation, for independent candidature. According to the IEC, there is likely to be tens of independent MP candidates and hundreds of independent Council candidates (mekoko)! What beast(s) of parliament or councils is this slouching towards Botswana to be born?
Dominus vobiscum, if you thought this was the chief malady in the national psyche, currently. Gabz fm ‘Breakfast with Reg’ programme, this morning had a topic which symbolised the health condition of our political mind: Khama’s alleged ‘hit-list’ and UDC president’s allegedly applying for the BDP president’s party membership has set tongues wagging. The mass of acquaintances in the hospital corridors side-stepped my question on registration to ask whether it was true Khama had a ‘hit-list,’ and whether the UDC president had been to Khama’s office to apply for BDP membership ?
When I answered that I was as blank of the allegations as they were, since Gabz fm was our common source, they were incredulous. As far as they were concerned, I was privy to the ‘turning and turning in the widening gyre.’ “Aren’t you the opposition?” There were open secrets between the opposition and the BDP, “le a tshwana (you’re birds of a feather!)” Unfair; but they were right to be suspicious and incredulous about the spine-chilling allegations that flew thick and fast in the ferment of national politics.
A day or two after the first airing of the allegations, Gabz fm, Duma fm, press interviews began to shed light on some obscure recesses of the allegations and counter-allegations surrounding the melodramatic plot. The ‘hit- list’ allegation, ever a stubborn one to admit by any government, let alone a government in the Khama image, is a constant in maladministration. Moreover ‘hit-lists’ are never confined to elimination of targets directly and physically. Targets can be hit at various points: transport and communication devices of the listed may be hit, family and relatives may be hit and other targets may be hit.
The Kalafatis family incidents come to mind; no matter how much state officials may deny it, questions refuse to go away to exonerate state officials/agents. Denials are useless, where you have an Intelligence Agency operating in pitch darkness, without slightest oversight, sans transparency, right from appointment through operation phase, to reporting, the agency is set to be susceptible to hit squads tendency! Then the onus isn’t on those who allege ‘hit lists’ but those who deny, to prove they have no hit lists!
The dicey one is whether leader of an opposition party agitating and working for regime change can be caught in a compromising hug with the ‘enemy.’ Defections at the top are un-common, though possible. That’s why the statement alleged to have been made by Khama to deter the defection of the UDC leader may appear plausible though improbable, that the egomaniac Khama, with vaulting ambition to win all the 57 constituencies in October could allow a big fish to slip through the net on some wishy-washy sentiment!.
It’s a puzzle that makes the allegation flimsy, to UDC supporters’ glee! Obviously if there was a chink in the story of UDC leader’s defection, the preposterous allegation of the BCP leader ‘forming a coalition’ with the BDP will explode with shrapnel in the face of the mass of UDC petty slanderers, who allege it. Too many sick minds in the confused Botswana’s political scene! Thankfully the confusion begins to unravel.
The UDC president’s denial of membership ‘riddle,’ however hangs by a thread from interviews around it. By his own admission the blanket denial by his supporters that he was defamed by the allegation that he had been to Khama’s office has been sorted out. He has been there, four times for various reasons including discussion of ‘government of national unity.’ It narrows the gap between the benighted garrulous mass defenders and those who merely seek the truth. The hint of the CCtv footages by Sadique, Tlhalerwa and the common knowledge that the meeting between the UDC leader and the president is no longer malicious gossip or fiction authored by creative novelists is now in Khama’s court. He must release the CCtv footage for public scrutiny. Declining the demand isn’t an option; his credibility hangs in the balance!