GCC chamber turned into circus

From 0903 a.m. when the four-member mayoral procession padded into the chamber, to 0925 a.m. when Botswana Democratic Party councillors stormed out in protest, the Gaborone City Council was a delicious mixture of political drama and entertainment that happens only on special Wednesday mornings.

At the very start of the session, Mayor Haskins Nkaigwa, asked specially elected councillor, Reverend Rupert Hambira, to lead the house in prayer. Amid a chorus of councillors’ sniggers echoing throughout the chamber, it was not possible to make out all of what Hambira said but one part of it was a retort about not feeling “confident” obliging the mayor’s request given the circumstances. A split second later, however, the Reverend did oblige with “Let’s pray” and delivered a one-line prayer: “Dear Lord, bless the deliberations of this Council. Amen.”

As the mayor began to read out the day’s business from a copy of an order paper he had in front of him, Hambira rose to his feet to remind him that there was still business pending from yesterday that had to be dispensed with. “I am aggrieved with the way my motion was dealt with yesterday and I want to bring it back to the floor,” the councillor said.

Nkaigwa countered by saying that the matter had been closed the previous day and he now wanted the Council to proceed to dealing with “Day 3” business. “There will be no Day Three if you don’t listen to us. You are bound to listen to us,” the Reverend fired from his chair. However, the Mayor was adamant that no motion would be retabled. On Day 2, Hambira and his BDP colleagues had walked out in protest when Nkaigwa overruled the motion. They were thus not present when the matter, at least from the Mayor’s perspective, was concluded. Nkaigwa said that Hambira could not expect Council business to be suspended just because he left in a huff and puff. He used Setswana “ha o tsamaya o ngadile ….”

On Tuesday evening, the two men had sparred over the issue on GabzFM, and at the close of the last round, the score card showed an almost equal number of punches for either combatant. To the huff-and-puff comment, Hambira pleaded with “Let’s stop fighting; we did enough of that last night.”
But Nkaigwa stuck to his guns: the motion would not be retabled, he declared, and to loud murmurs of disapproval and audible dissent from BDP councillors, he likened the disorder in the house to “kwa ga Mmapereko.” The latter is a Setswana expression used to describe a hopelessly chaotic situation.
Adapting his language and tactics as the acrimonious debate lurched back and forth, Hambira finally managed to deliver a sucker punch when he asked that he table “a motion without notice,” which the standing orders allow. Still, Nkaigwa wanted to know “what kind of motion” this was. “Is that question ever asked?” Hambira asked with a demeanour and tone of incredulity.

Ephraim Mabengano of the Botswana Congress Party rose to object to the tabling of an urgent motion, in the process tripping over an English saying and promptly provoking derisory laughter and ill-natured barbs from his opponents. In giving his reasons for why the motion was unnecessary, the Segoditshane ward councillor happened to say that the BDP councillors were hell-bent on “holding the house at random.”
“Gatwe ‘at random’,” one BDP councillor sneered. “Bua Sekalaka bogolo.”

In this hour of great semantic need, Hermes, the God of languages, seems to be shunning opposition councillors. The previous day on Gabz FM, Nkaigwa could not pair Setswana words with the right body part, expressing the hope that his political opponents “ba ta a isa makgwaho ko tlase” when that should have been “ba tla a wela dibete.”   
In the hubbub immediately following Mabengano’s slip of the tongue and with almost every councillor trying to get a word in edgewise, Nkaigwa got into another verbal tangle with Nunu Lekau of the BDP: “O ta o ijetse se o se ijetseng….”
“I will respond to you later,” she responded, but never got a chance to return the disfavour.

Finally however, Hambira did get to retable his motion which called on the house to declare the positions of Mayor and Deputy Mayor vacant because the parties to which the current office holders belong had lost majority status.
Nkaigwa disallowed the motion, explaining that it had failed the previous day and that if Hambira wanted to bring it back he would have to do so after six months as the council rules say. Midway his explanation, BDP councillors were already packing up. When Hambira and former mayor Veronica Lesole rose to leave, the rest followed. “This is one how we’ll be doing business with you,” one said triumphantly on his way out. When a crestfallen Nkaigwa rose again, it was to announce that the house was inquorate and had to adjourn.