The last few weeks have been marked by ecstatic chants and war dances of the enemies of the Umbrella. Some inept prophesies had already been rendered by the Botswana Democratic Party and its flunkies within the opposition, that the Umbrella was foredoomed to failure. They preyed, prayed and waited for vindication. It seemed to arrive on December 22nd, 2011 when the four parties at the negotiations, unable to resolve differences over a handful of Parliamentary constituencies, pronounced a collapse of the talks. It was a collapse by proclamation. The leadership of the main opposition parties had displayed a dangerous one dimensional brittleness that exposed summitry and personalism so suspect by nature and frail by technique that some of them would expend their energies hopping from one news medium to the next providing unsolicited justifications.
Some seemed to derive libidinous pleasure from the fact of the "collapse". They trumpeted it from the sunroofs of their fancy cars and exhorted others to join them in their melee of glee. And all the while our people were being condemned to accept the misrule of the Botswana Democratic Party as their settled fate.Charlatans came out of the woodwork and became experts and analysts overnight. Acres of newspaper space were taken up by these characters, writing columns on matters they had little to no factual understanding of. They had erupted into a fart fight into which they attempted to suck everybody. Oh boy! These columnists and mound banks were dealing toxic volleys of their stuff; at levels so toxic that they could, in the observation of the award winning American comedian George Carlin, "eat the stitching out of your Levi jeans". Polluters! I personally steered clear of these characters. Where I bumped into any one of them I simply reacted with affable indifference to their claptrap. I reserved my pity for the ordinary Motswana. The air around was thick with the scent of unfinished business; you know, that feeling of turning back at the threshold. I listened to the anguished arguments and protestations of the ordinary citizen. I reviewed the vaunted "collapse" and this proclaimed failure over and over in my mind. It was a time for agonising reappraisal. It invited a corresponding complexity of thought and expression that eludes your typical soundbite politician. I was moved. I acted.
