As I see it – Mmegi Online

Sports people shake hands with opponents after a matchc- whether it be tennis, football or any sports encounter.Politicians, true politicians say, “People have spoken” and congratulate their political opponents for their victory after general elections. Only a bad loser slinks away with a sullen face, muttering grumbles. For this reason I congratulate the BDP for their 50th anniversary as a party, a relatively strong party, winning nine free general elections in a row, albeit not by fair means. Nonetheless, well done, Domkragi!  But grateful they did not invite me to celebrate with them. Had they done so, I would have declined the invitation. I have never known the vanquished in sport join opponents when they celebrate their victories. How can one celebrate the life and victories of someone who humiliates you, relegates you to the dust, every time you tussle? Sounds crazy! Celebrate, means honouring and praising publicly, some event, some organization, some person, marking a happy occasion with song, dance, drink and food! How can one really do that without making oneself an irredeemable clown?Rejoicing at your second fiddle status? I would rather celebrate with the three opposition parties BMD, BNF and the BCP who found no rhyme nor reason to celebrate with Madomi! Congratulations, comrades! I know how you scrupled with your consciences and folks who misinterpret and cling to Setswana saying: Ntwakgolo ke ya molomo/jaw-jaw is better than war-war.

I understood the hysteria that pervaded radio studio(s); Gabz fm studio saw the ‘boycotting’ of the 50th BDP celebration by opposition parties as ‘childish and immature.’ My! It sounded like a swear word! Tshepho and Reginald drummed that chide, ‘childish and immature’ into the eardrums of poor comrade Rasina on report that BMD had made a u-turn after BMD Vice President Honourable Botsalo Ntuane had agreed to go ‘wine, dine, sing and dance’ with our brothers and sisters (for readers’ information, I have a loving and lovely sister, relatives and friends in this camp of celebrants!) Hats off to comrade Rasina who withstood the onslaught from Reginald and Tshepo and hopefully taught them a bit of democracy and collective responsibility, that a party or organization is bigger than a member and that it has the right to take and rescind decisions likely to put it in disrepute or dent its stock of political image. Well done comrade! Not many could have parried and ducked the avalanche of jabs, uppercuts and crosses thrown by Tshepo and Reginald. They were doing their duty convinced they represented ngwao or culture (if it ever was) ,which appears to have outlived its place and time.

Sorry Tshepo and Regi, time is flying by, discarding expired foodstuffs. Sorry!Coming to the meat of this whole table of celebration: Precisely what was the BDP celebrating and asking the nation to celebrate with them? Were they asking us to celebrate with them, their mediocrity and sluggishness? Fine, they adopted multiparty democracy and got stuck there in the mud of arrogance and ill-advice. They failed to develop the democratic ideal! In conversations with the BDP MPs while I was MP, I was fond of teasing them by asking them what they would have done had the diamonds in Orapa and Jwaneng not been discovered shortly after independence? The Lord is my witness, I never got an intelligent answer from my BDP colleagues and friends. Ja, I made many friends among the BDP colleagues, who initially regarded me as a terrorist who had fought terrorist wars in foreign lands! When they threw the question back at me, I told them we would have fallen back on agriculture and pastoral farming. We would have modernised agriculture and made it more of the backbone of the economy which it always was. Instead they neglected it and are only waking up from their deep slumber. We would have long striven to build dams they are only belatedly doing for irrigation farming, we would have diversified the economy through cooperatives, consumer and producer cooperatives as well as banking cooperatives among others. Where would we have got money for irrigation dams? We would have tapped the goodwill of the international community, organizations and governments to channel their aid to the dam-building and education. On education we considered ourselves fortunate to have had a man like Patrick van Rensburg who identified the relevant type of education for our politico-socio-economic situation, ‘Education With Production.’  Had we adopted EWP we would have produced skills in construction industry.

The Chinese wouldn’t be here with hoards of unskilled labour they claim as more skilled than local workers. We had the potential to develop our own construction companies which would have saved us billions of pula, now repatriated to the People’s Republic of China under our snaaks/queer policy of repatriating every thebe of profits, foreign companies fleece from Botswana. Imagine this self-destructive policy, denying us to invest our money in our own country. Billions of pula repatriated to foreign lands! The arrogant answer the public sector workers get when they demand inflation adjustment is: “Ga gona madi/there is no money!” Ee, there is no money, for it has all been repatriated to PRC to create jobs for the Chinese, while Batswana are condemned to Ipelegeng and backyard gardening, that silly of sillies of poverty eradication schemes! The mediocre, rote-learning BDP learnt that to develop a backward country, people must rely on foreign investment. Foreign investment, drowns all arguments! You say, ‘yea, foreign investment, but a bit of native intelligence and sophistication, as well!.’