The landslide victory for Festus Mogae in last Saturday’s general election hides a veritable cauldron of infighting in his ruling Botswana Democratic Party (BDP).
On the face of it, Botswana has everything going for it: it is a homogenous country that has become the world’s richest source of uncut diamonds.
The peaceful — not to say boring —nature of the elections underlines the country’s political stability.
The BDP pocketed 44 of the 57 National Assembly seats that were up for grabs. This left the opposition Botswana National Front (BNF) with an improved 12 seats and the Botswana Congress Party (BCP), which broke with it six years ago, with only one.
The addition of four nominated MPs should give Mogae an unassailable 48 seats in the lower house.
Why, then, is the Oxford educated economist talking of dissolving Parliament if it doesn’t approve of him handing the baton to his chosen successor, Ian Khama, before his five- year term ends? This has, after all, become the pattern in Botswana: the way he was handed the reins by Ketumile Masire six years ago.
Botswana’s MPs form an electoral college that names the new president. Candidates declare themselves before being elected to the Assembly.
This was why Chief Justice Julian Nganunu was able to declare Mogae president the moment the stuttering vote count reached a simple majority.
The opposition and the media in Botswana are joined by a group within the ruling party that believes this system needs changing — that the Constitution has been bent to suit the BDP.
The BDP has won every one of the country’s elections since independence in 1966. The party’s electoral task has been made all the more simple by the fractious opposition.
Analysts believe that making an electoral pact with even two smaller parties this time around might have cost the BNF some seats.
The only telling opposition pact would be one reuniting the BNF and BCP and that doesn’t appear on any observer’s radar screen.
So the BDP will continue to face its strongest opposition from the independent media. Not one of the privately owned newspapers supports the ruling party.
And it is these media that are pushing hardest for the presidential race to form part and parcel of the election battle — rather than to allow it to become a foregone conclusion with a premature handover to a handpicked successor.
Mogae could find himself facing similar calls from within the BDP.
The so-called Mogae-Khama axis within the ruling party suffered the loss of three Cabinet ministers — Boometswe Mokgothu from minerals, energy and water; Margaret Nasha from lands and housing; and Michael Tshipinare from local government.
This has emboldened the so-called Kedikilwe-Kwelagobe group of at least 20 ruling party MPs.
Pontashego Kedikilwe has not forgotten how he was steamrollered out of the party chairpersonship when the Mogae-Khama axis took control of the central committee last year.
They behaved in similarly heavy-handed manner in securing the youth wing of the party midway through this year.
In naming his new Cabinet and selecting the nominated MPs Mogae has to decide whether to buy some credit with the opposing faction or pay off his supporters. Mogae isn’t even close to facing defections, but the opposition will mint maximum capital from any rift that appears.
The BDP will be heartened by its performance in the Kalahari, where it has not paid a price for the controversial programme of resettling the San. The matter is now before the courts.
And in the corridor constituency of Mogoditshane near Gaborone, where the government made enemies evicting squatters, a local resident, Patrick Masimole, was able to hold the seat for the BDP.
Real credit for this, however, has to go to the BNF and BCP for comprehensively splitting the vote.
Regional observers from the Southern African Development Community (SADC) parliamentary forum and the Electoral Institute of Southern Africa gave the elections the thumbs up.
Armed with its new guidelines, the SADC team made a number of recommendations including separating the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) from the government — particularly in the appointment of IEC officials.
The Batswana showed an impressive level of political sophistication applying a checks and balances pattern in voting between local and national government. As a result the opposition took a number of municipal seats in Gaborone and Lobatse.