The chickens are coming home to roost

Kgosietsile Ngakaagae | Friday August 10, 2018 12:43

In fact, they deserve everything that is coming their way and much more. They deserve dogs twice the size of those we saw in Bobonong. They deserve duels and quarrels and fistfights. Somehow they must learn. They have inculcated in their party a deep culture of sycophancy that has set the country back by many years and have openly celebrated it.

This is a party where the leader is more important than country. Sycophancy is ingrained in the BDP DNA from top to bottom. You can beat a BDP member with a baseball bat all day and they will say that Belgium is an African country if their president says so. The fervour with which they defend wrong when their presidents are involved is appalling.

It is not that I don’t like these guys in red. I have plenty of friends and clients amongst them. Some really good people, I must say. I am a beneficiary of their policies after all.

I mean, where in Africa do you go through University without paying a cent? I never had to wait tables to pay tuition.

Don’t tell me it’s taxpayer’s money because taxes are paid everywhere, but you still have to pay for your education.

There were other areas of national need to which the resources could have been employed but they prioritised me. Now, I am not ignorant. They were not doing me a favour, of course.

Yes, it was my money involved, but it was their discretion too. For that I am grateful. But I still wish them dogs.

Ian Khama had wanted a Putin-Medvedev relationship. But the trustee has fled with the trust. The fiduciary duty is in shambles. The surrogate mother has run away with the baby.

The good thing about our man is that he has always been easy to read. In every way, unless you chose to be wilfully blind. If he ever acted any role, he failed miserably because the true Khama always shone through.

The leadership now fighting him waited on his every want. They massaged his ego, crushed any dissent and visited anyone who sought to critique him with contumelious epithets.

No one cared to admonish him. In fact they unashamedly lauded his defects. They heaped him song, poetry and dance for being wrong.  When he missed a heads of state meeting, and went quad-biking in the pans, it was all right. When he refused to hold press conferences he was right.

When he indulged himself with an airport at State expense it was right. When he left office, they looted the whole country for him raiding the rich and poor alike.

When he wasted national wealth with clearly misguided policies, they defended him.  Well, it was always obvious that they didn’t love him.

Soon as the incumbent came, they dropped him like a bad habit. It is sad. Very sad for the man. Many simply loved being close to him and feeding on the crumbs that fell from his table.

The chickens are home to roost and they are raining droppings from the branches.

I do not want a puppet regime. For that, the incumbent must be applauded. I have said it before and I say it again; the sound of a quad-bike just traumatises me. When I hear them roar, I imagine that the regime is back.

The question is, how far can the incumbent go before the jack gives in under the weight. I will not pretend to know.

Make no mistake about it, the Presidency is a powerful position. I do not think that Khama can bring down the BDP government if the incumbent plays his cards well.

Besides, the UDC is in such a shambolic state it cannot take a free base. But he can hurt the party mighty bad. The shots that were fired in Bobirwa were not for the Member of Parliament.

They were an unequivocal invitation to the incumbent to a duel. And I relish the duel.

Khama’s strongest weapon is his tribal constituency and it is massive. He reminded that gathering of his status of being Kgosikgolo just the other day.

They have the party and he has the voters, he seemed to say. Perhaps he overestimates his influence. But no person in their right senses would take him lightly.

Having said that, he can hurt himself whilst at it. His strength may be his weakness. Many of those who smiled at him at that launch aren’t happy with Ngwato hegemony over them.

They are not happy that their chiefs are his servants.  They will go with the incumbent if he so much as hints the possibility of freedom from Serowe.

Take the President to Bobonong and the situation may turn on its head. His strength may be his weakness. God forbid that we should enter an era where a tribe becomes a political weapon.

But until our politics take a tribal trajectory, I will enjoy this BDP showpiece. And who knows, we might live to see a day when the eloquence of the Leader of the Opposition fills the courtroom in defence of a BDP dissenter or faction. Reserve me a ringside seat.