BDP beyond Schlemmer

| Friday March 16, 2012 00:00

About a month-and-a-half ago in Gaborone, a high-ranking official of one opposition party was called to the office of a very senior official of the Botswana Democratic Party. On the table was an offer: We are open to a sensible discussion. What do you want?

The BDP official, an elderly man and a very senior member of the executive, had been sent to talk to the young man; to tell him that all options were on the table. The 'usual package' was put before the youthful opposition politician: A diplomatic post. A ministerial post. Special attention to the young man's business interests, should he need some.  The opposition politician wanted to know what was in it for his fellow comrades still stuck in opposition wilderness. Well, the old man returned, 'Forget those. It is you we want. They can atone for their own sins at their own time.'

The elderly man was wrapping up what had begun as a meeting of the highest leaders of the BDP a few months before. In the post-public strike depression that engulfed the ruling party faithful last year, party strategists met to consider options going forward. At that time, with the triumph of the opposition in the air, unions threatening all out war and an executive that seemed to give scant attention to the political implications of its actions, BDP political strategies were having a hard time figuring out how to deal with 2014.  The fallout from the strike and the party's fractured relations with the unions combined with a united opposition to present an ominous prognosis.

Another limitation was that the BDP government did not seem to factor in the political implications of its actions on the party. The BDP, at least at the very top, is not made up of political thinkers per se. To some extent, since the complete marginalisation of those either directly associated with or sympathetic to the Barata-Phathi faction towards the 2009 general elections, the party has replaced political thinkers with retired technocrats.

Take, for example, the BDP's current executive committee, the President Ian Khama, Secretary General Mpho Balopi, Treasurer Satar Dada, Deputy Secretary General Malebogo Kruger and Deputy Treasurer Kagiso Mmusi. While Khama - through his sheer popularity among the party's supporters and indeed in the nation - remains an asset, he cannot be expected to be a political thinker in the traditional sense.

In that executive, only Daniel Kwelagobe possesses a thinking tied around the political survival of the party. This is the reason that people like Kentse Rammidi found the party difficult to abide. It was a party led by an executive whose decisions and body language gave an air of arrogant disregard for the political implications of the very party that kept them in power.

However, a debate was raging within the party and those steeped in political strategy were at last accorded an ear. Worrying times lay ahead and the party had to think deeply about how it would handle the challenges of 2014, they advised. From the vantage point of 2011, the 2014 general elections seemed to suggest challenges not unlike 1999 as seen from 1997 by the party strategists. However, in 1997, the party could call on a political consultant.

'The Schlemmer report identified factionalism as a major problem and recommended that the BDP should obtain a person of 'sufficient dynamism, 'untainted' by factional fights, to 'unite' the party. In addition, Schlemmer called for the retirement of the BDP old guard and an infusion of new talent - essentially these recommendations focused on imagery and on some large assumptions, but the report led directly to the supposedly celebrated transition from Masire to Mogae,' noted Professor Kenneth Good.

In 2011, the BDP was facing an opposition favoured by political events and an ability to ride those events to the central space in national discourse. But the BDP, even without Schlemmer, could 're-brand' its way out of the political morass, the strategists argued. That was in 2011. However in the last week of 2011, the opposition talks collapsed and the BDP could not believe its luck even when it stared at the unsolicited Christmas gift. But it was not the collapse of the talks that provided so much interest in and of by themselves; it was more the recriminations that followed that mattered more. With the opposition ranks demoralised, the BDP could take advantage by stepping up its regenerating efforts.

The Botswana Movement for Democracy (BDP), a party which had broken off from the ruling party in an unprecedented seismic fracture, provided for easy pickings for various reasons: its members understood the BDP and some were from BDP families. With the rejection that the BCP and the BNF had displayed at the last stages of the unity talks and the cooperation project that the two opposition giants seemed intent on creating, the BMD would have no space in the opposition political landscape.

Most importantly, and perhaps not unexpectantly, the BMD was in a state of flux at the top level. Some of its most senior members were beginning to show a malleability and willingness to re-engage with the ruling party. Having won support within the wider party, the strategists of the BDP decided to strike when the iron was still hot in the months following the collapse of the talks.

The BDP of 2014 would be a party that could usurp the strengths of the opposition and project them as its own.Between now and then, it would attract youthful individuals from opposition ranks, credible individuals who commanded respect in the wider society and even attract those viewed as representing the wider concerns of the youth.

In 2014, the BDP is planning to field candidates not any different from opposition candidates, at least from a public relations and image management point of view. BDP strategists want to field candidates who are seen as contemporaries of their opposition counterparts - mainly young, educated, articulate and even a bit fashionably radical, in some aspects.  The party did go for the pickings from the BMD. Anything from the BMD would do. Guma Moyo, who, after founding the BMD, left mid-year in 2011, returned to the BDP. And then the party netted something more exotic - BNF Youth League president Kagiso Ntime crossed over. A few weeks later, the party welcomed Armstrong Dikgafela and his 'comrades' from the BMD Youth League.

The plan is still unfolding as BDP strategists continue to seek after more individuals the party deems untainted. Just this past week, they welcomed former High Court judge, Unity Dow, and if things go according to plan, more such individuals will be welcomed between now and 2014. Dow provides a classic example of the individual the BDP is looking for. Seen as a progressive, her judgment on the Basarwa CKGR case came out scathing. She therefore helps the party present itself a suitable home to 'progressives' of her ilk.

The BDP would like to remake itself for 2014. If the strategists have their way, the ballot paper will have names such as Dow, Havard law graduate Saadiq Kebonang and businessmen Lesang Magang and Kagiso Mmusi.It was this and more that the discrete meeting between that old man of the BDP and the youthful opposition leader was about. As the party seeks to remake itself, it will need many young and 'sellable' individuals, hence the offer. In their parlance, the young fellas might say that's for the slam dunk beyond Schlemmer!