Boko’s Graveyard of Dreams

 

“Here comes the conman. Coming with his con plan. We won’t take no bribe. We’ve got to stay alive.” Perhaps Bob Marley was being prophetic about our current despicable and deplorable situation. Not even the best spin doctor can save the current regime from the seismic public anger.

Even if they flood all social media platforms, with their ever-rude, vulgar and violent ‘Nwa metsi’ brigade, to attack any dissenting voice, it will not save President Duma Boko and company from the inevitable.

The reality before us needs neither spin nor spokesperson. It speaks for itself. And it speaks nothing but the truth. And the truth is, things are falling apart. The centre can no longer hold.

There are too many parts moving, but all are moving in different directions. As it stands, we are in a ‘million ways to die’ situation, but we have to choose one. At the present moment, it is just a cacophony of chaos.

Nothing is working. Schools have turned into award-winning training camps for ‘upcoming’ bullies, thugs and drug-dealers. Indiscipline has come to define discipline. Teachers have been rendered obsolete.

They cannot bring kids to order without provoking rebuke of the highest order from either the Minister or President Boko. All in the name of ‘human rights.’

On the other hand, former President Ian Khama, as expected, has turned Ntlo ya Dikgosi into Freedom Square. He seems ardent to use the platform as a springboard to launch scathing attacks on Boko and his administration.

The same Boko who gave him everything he wanted on a silver platter, hoping Khama would go easy on him. But the sordid truth is, it is Boko who has been playing chameleon on Khama.

Khama has not changed, not even a bit. It is Boko who has been swinging from foe to friend and back again. But Khama is still the ‘I am that I am.’ He still wants power and control, in whatever shape and form.

Boko should not be under the illusion that if he were to succumb to Khama’s demands and dismiss Brigadier Peter Magosi, that would be enough to appease Khama.

In fervently pursuing Magosi, he is probably looking to remove an obstacle before he goes Taliban on Boko and the UDC. This should serve as a lesson to Boko that commonality in enemies is not commonality in interests.

They had a common agenda on President Mokgweetsi Masisi, and Khama leveraged on the UDC numbers, because he knew, alone, he could not achieve it. This is a military concept called the economy of force.

At the time, Boko seems to have subscribed to the value system that means justifying the ends. Although this value system is always tempting, Boko should have known that the ends are just as important as the means.

Whatever the short-term benefits, they are always outweighed by the long-term costs and often lay the seeds for the next conflict. That is where we are at the moment.

But the crisis we are facing in the health sector is the mother of all crises. It supersedes and poses a real and not hypothetical existential threat. The situation is beyond dire. It is a matter of life and

death. And in most instances, death prevails.

Our clinics and hospitals have become nothing but a jungle of misery and a chasm of death. They just become a place to die. The situation is disturbingly out of control. Our grandparents have to brave thugs and snakes at wee hours of the night to queue under the hope that they will get help, only to come back hungry, angry and hopeless.

The shelves of government pharmacies are eerily empty. The only thing abundantly available is lies and more lies. How many times have we been told fantastical stories of truckloads of medicine from the Middle East? We have lost count. But deep in the middle of such an existential threat, Boko is busy hopping from one kgotla meeting to another, propagating about the Constitutional Court.

You heard me right, people are dying because they cannot even receive the threshold of medical care, and Boko is busy stepping over the sick and corpses to tell us about his Constitutional Court. How shameless can one be?

What purpose is this Court going to serve, if we are all dead? Is this Court going to resuscitate this near-death economy, to create or at least save jobs?

At the present moment, public discourse led by Boko should be on ways and methods of how to salvage this battered economy.

Anything to the contrary is an extreme sport. The industrious energy Boko is putting into this Constitutional Court makes the whole endeavour very suspect.

The fallacy of our current political victors lies in the assumption that their victory naturally, if not inherently, carries deep significance. It has clearly been a hollow victory. Their ineffectiveness is hiding in plain sight.

Their demise lies in the sense that they are not making. We have watched in awe as the country delves deep into the gradual disintegration of political order and governance across various sectors.

The prevailing economic deprivation, lack of basic resources, and the lack of political authority are surely contributing to the increasing dysfunction of the current administration.

The inability of the government to provide fundamental services such as healthcare, education, and security leaves populations vulnerable and disenfranchised.

Boko has become a graveyard of Batswana dreams, and to hell with his ConCourt.