God the rainmaker delivers, it�s the president�s turn!
Michael Dingake | Tuesday March 7, 2017 17:21
We haven’t disposed of these memento of the water supply disruption days of the previous years when the President and his administration was berated daily for the season of dry water taps; it was a nasty experience.
The public and President, were at loggerheads. The grouses about the water situation irritated Khama, he let fly verbally with a washing-of-the-hands outburst: “I am not God, I don’t make rain!” Modjadji, the Balobedu rain queen would have split her sides laughing at the beleaguered image in pantaloons!
The President mistakenly thought the thirsting masses, by their grouses insinuated that he was God the rainmaker. He misunderstood popular demand that said he wasn’t only the Commander-in-Chief of the war machine to defend the country’s borders, but was defender of the nation’s survival under all circumstances and all seasons: summer, autumn, winter and spring.
Otherwise why is he Khama the Botswana President, if his powers fell short of the messiah’s? Food to eat, water to drink, clothes to wear, employment to produce life necessities, hospitals to tend and care for the sick and schools to prepare our children for adulthood. That’s Presidential menu to place order or throw into the dustbin. He’s the vicar of God in Botswana, doesn’t he understand?
When it rains, his office has the nerve to issue a press release claiming it was through his mediation that the rains came down.
He doesn’t deny it, thus obliquely acknowledging the rains were the answer to the prayers he initiated.
That’s why he excitedly marshals his cabinet, religious leaders and Batswana at large to join him at thanksgiving for the good rains at the Gaborone Dam on Sunday, 5 March.
Question is, why didn’t he think of the public intercession to the rainmaker for the rains, until the public started grumbling and grousing, implying he was deadwood president? Before the public grouses became audible and pervasive, he knew drought was around. Right now the downpours have come; devastated infrastructure. Did he have plans to conserve the rare commodity for the lean years?
Logically, if we base ourselves on the biblical narrative that says, man/woman was made in the image of God, implicitly making him/her artist/creator, it follows that as humans we can and in fact do replicate and improve on God’s artistry and creativity.
Whereas God made day and night, where night plunges us into darkness, by discovering electricity man has turned night’s darkness into daylight; whereas God gave man legs to walk and cover distances, man through science has invented the automobile, the locomotive and the aeroplane to cover long distances in the shortest time; and whereas God gave us wild berries , we have domesticated berries to make beverages and alcohol to drink.
Even rain-making is no longer the preserve of God: Clouds can be seeded to yield rain, does he know? The point however is, Botswana doesn’t have to suffer lack of water, simply because God the rainmaker may be oversleeping. We have built dams, we’re developing the Masama West wells for the anticipated lean years.
We can do more by building more dams, or sinking more boreholes to access the inexhaustible underground water supply stored by the great Okavango river over the millennia! We don’t have to suffer and thirst due to our presidents not being Modjadji the rain-queen. Batswana, together with Khama should admit, they’ve skewed priorities. Wrong preferences! Instead of prioritising water conservation since we’re semi-desert, knowing there’s alternation of the El Nino and the La Nina phenomena during which the rainless and the rainy years alternate, we should be alive to water availability as priority instead of military hardware toys , when we don’t have foreign armies bivouacking at our borders! God has been generous to us not only by sending His only Son to die for us on the cross, but because He created us in his own image, thereby endowing us with brainpower to fend for ourselves when shove came to push!
Pardon me if I think the President’s call to prayer at the Gaborone Dam was but a showoff to test and taste his popularity! Personally I wasn’t attracted to the Dam prayer assembly. I stayed home and prayed for divine wisdom and courage for our political leadership to know the national priorities and courage to execute them.
I also prayed for the collective wisdom to choose only leaders of Solomon’s wisdom and the courage of Samson! Batswana need leaders who can think, know national priorities and who possess the guts to implement priorities identified. Now and then you observe a faint glimmer of wisdom from our leaders. Take Vision 2016! I classified Vision 2016 as utopian precisely because I knew beforehand it wouldn’t be implemented though it was implementable. I knew there’d be no courage to implement the Vision. The courage called for was to design a plan for implementation and systematic monitoring process. Nothing of the sort was envisaged, so the Vision folded. The same goes for the new Vision 2036!The voting public is just as bad; for 50 years they recycled the same party they knew had wrong priorities; they lacked guts to dump the political bumblers, the self-seeking peacocky pageantry! The voting public became voting cattle.
Holland a small European country realised the land could be swamped by the sea. They built the dykes. Holland survives. That’s wisdom and courage; not hands-on-the-head resignation to challenges. Khama has still to deliver!