Political rebirth needed (Part II)

Kgosietsile Ngakaagae | Friday December 4, 2020 15:34

There is a point beyond which, a nation must hold hands and politics must be secondary as like bereaved, estranged siblings, united for a moment in grief by the tragic loss of a parent. It’s a failing of African democracies that we never rise beyond such. Sadly, its true for my country too. A negotiated, comprehensive response initiative, to the aftermath, is still necessary. Based on the comments to the state of the nation address, you know we are nowhere near all that. Its all the politics of the UDC and Domkrag; of cynical and unsmiling government men who believe that a political adversary must be vanquished comprehensively and that inter party dialogue is concession of failure and abject weakness. A moment of undeniable national crisis has failed to mature our politics, let alone, our politicians. If anything, its laid bare how soulless our national discourse is, and how desperately destitute of common sense and decency even the most garbed we have contrived to elect to Parliament morph to total dimwits when evangelise by the party caucus. It’s a shame.

I genuinely think the country needs a political rebirth. We need to find and to engender a modicum of core national values that can hold us together and keep us focused on the essence of our being. We can’t be a Republic without a soul; whose destiny and essence must be divined by reference to the fleeting reality of the president of the day or the rancor of semi literate party liners who can tell the difference between party and country Each time we have a new president, the country must shape up around him. It must assume his shape or form. There must be a pause to divine his personal character, which then informs the mould of the state apparatus and the legislative thinking. In the process, there’s no consistency and no abiding national destiny. The destination of the nation is tied to the 10-year temperamental vacillations and idiosyncrasies of a ruler or the lack thereof.

To be sure leaders will no doubt have impact on national destiny. It can’t be any other way, really. Otherwise they wouldn’t be leaders. But destiny should not be found in a leader. A leader must lead us to a national destiny all citizens of all clings; creed and political inclinations aspire for as a common objective, and shouldn’t be destiny itself.

But no leader must have a right, by mere fiat of office, to construct and or deconstruct the nation state to model it after a personal paradigm nor should the institutions of governance be malleable enough to permit such an abomination. The character of the state must remain constant around its core values and ideals even if the leaders must change. Leaders must be moored to a basic set of values they can never overgrow even at the height of their power and success. All we ask of them is their deft and skill in governance to help us actualise as a functional national and to achieve elusive socio economic ambitions in an increasingly competitive and hostile global economy.

President Mokgweetsi Masisi is missing out on these elementary considerations. He has failed dismally to assembly a team that loves this country, and has only assembled one that loves him and is obsessed with politics of the stomach. He must reform the country and Cabinet from the presidency and not to it. The presidency is too pervasive, and that alone offers ample distraction from governance. By now the constitutional review commission must be winding down it work. There should be wheeling and dealing across the political spectrum, as an acknowledgement that power at the polls doesn’t constitute power over the country’s challenges. That political power is only a means to an end, being the nation state, as opposed to being an end in itself. He must rebrand BDP political thinking, around which feeds so many demagogues, and emphatically remind them that himself and party cannot be bigger than the country.

Well, I’m only a commentator. Who really cares? Its the “celebrity lawyer” with his usual ‘know it all”, nonsense. Truth is do many do. There’s growing discontent in the population with the nations politics or the stage is at least being set for such. 1’m active on social media. I get so much feedback. Freedom Square politics will in time collide with naked hunger; abject unemployment and youth despondency and the cup of discontent will overflow. As one rich BDP man, I sat down with not so long ago said of his party; “we are sitting on a ticking time bomb”. The BDP threat to power will not come from the UDC. The two parties have been on a dance for five decades and seem to have settled into a rut. A state of endless infertile political coitus with a predictable climax every five years! The wave that will follow will be nothing short of a revolution. It will be driven by anger and hunger, and it will be emphatic and decisive of the enduring stalemate of political barrenness. No policy statements or tokenism will assuage or placate the impending tide of political despondency.

Beware Caesar, of the ides of March.