Do you regret quitting the BDP Bra Stan?
Dear TK Royal greetings to you Bra Stanford aka Tshekedi Khama II of the Royal Bamangwato clan. I hope this brief finds you in good health Your Royal Highness because of late I have not been too convinced that all is well with you. Silly me – what would I really expect of a man whose whole life had been attended by supreme privilege and then suddenly at the dusk of his life got a lot of these childbirth privileges taken away from him? You must be thinking I am out to diss you with my proffer of concern in relation to your apparent boredom and disinterest in the governance affairs of this country. Akere tota it should be pretty obvious that since you are now on the wrong side of the ruling party, you can no longer be that vivacious and seemingly omnipresent chap who made sure to charm his audiences as a minister, irrespective of which ministry you led. Kana wena tota you were a workaholic who took to your assigned roles like fish to water. Wherever you were, you always made sure to create and leave a mark. No ministry was too overwhelming for you. From the tourism ministry to the sport and youth, you made sure to make officers feel your presence. How you let yourself be tempted by the devil that made you dump the ruling party still beats me. Le fa e bile gotwe blood is thicker than water Bra Stan, the shenanigans that engulfed that pressure group you joined in October last year were too shameful and so below you that I never saw you going in their direction. I just wonder if you indeed joined out of your own volition or you were forced into that silly move by some form of blackmail from your royal uncles and aunts through the godly influence of Big Brother. Whatever happened Bra Stan? I personally think it was a ridiculous stunt you pulled there just on the eve of elections. I understand you were made to believe that your erstwhile ruling party was going to lose the elections and that you genuinely thought you were joining a winning opposition bloc. The unsung comedian in you, it would amuse me so profusely when immediately after quitting the BDP you called it a “party of drunkards.” You even proclaimed they would lose the elections with flying colours, the opposite of which would later happen. Now you are out there looking lost and casting a figure of a bored person. Kana I saw you recently in parliament – I tell you Bra Stan, you cut a forlorn figure and the way I saw it, you must have been regretting your decision to go with that mob that blindly followed Big Brother to the doomed land. I mean, who in their right mind would have thought that a pressure group of bitter Bulela Ditswe losers would win the elections and become this country’s ruling party? Kana that is what the hopeless members of that group thought – gore they could win the elections even when they knew they had not even fielded enough parliamentary contestants to give them even a sniffing chance.And you joined that joke of a cabal Bra Stan? Really? I always thought you were smarter than that Brazen. In fact, of all the ministers during both eras of Big Brother and Sisiboy, I always enjoyed listening to you talk. You always made sense and you were never afraid to defy even Big Brother himself whenever you had something better on your mind. In fact, many even concluded that there was no love lost between you and Big Brother. I recently listened to you again when you were sharing your thoughts on the Youth Development Fund and how it would benefit the economy if each ministry had its own YDF. As usual you made a lot of sense but on that particular matter I wondered why you never questioned Big Brother about it when he was still in charge. I thought to myself then: this is hypocrisy. Why is it now that you go vocal on an arrangement you had no qualms with under Big Brother? Neither did you use the advantage you had as a minister to push the matter through. No wonder people are now saying you only begin to sound like an intelligent man after quitting the ruling party. It is now common narrative that when people are still Madomi, they don’t use their brains – that their brains begin to function once they join the opposition camp. I am not sure if that is true Bra Stan but le wena the way you have been behaving lately, it might lend credence to such claims – that the brains of politicians function differently depending on which side they are. I was listening to you maloba o lela ka some MP’s constituency office o re the ruling party was deliberately depriving you of an office and staff because you defected to that pressure group ya Serowe. Ao Bra Stan – le wena you know you were not telling the truth. Yours was just some sympathy-seeking stunt; a trait I guess you learnt well from the leaders of that pressure group you joined. Kana those ones master the art of making themselves look like victims even where they are the rabble rousers. And so you have taken to that habit le wena and you are similarly making sure to invite members of the press to come and hear you out on how badly you are being treated. We remember how Big Brother also did that with distinction and managed to win hearts and minds of those who failed to see through him. To say your not having a constituency office is sabotage is disappointing from a man I so respected as you. Kana even in my constituency right now, my area MP Fox Moagi, has no office and prospective employees are yet to be approved. Just before that MPs budget analysis seminar/retreat that you boycotted, citing lack of MP’s office as your reason, my area MP was on our village’s facebook page pleading with his people to be patient as the process of getting him an office was at an advanced stage, and that soon the matter would be resolved. Yet he never called babega dikgang to cry sabotage the way you were doing. I am happy to hear that his office will open this week, eventually. In fact, I learnt later that actually 13 more constituencies were facing a similar problem to yours. 13 other MPs did not have constituency offices at the time you cried sabotage, including Honourable Motsamai of UDC in Ghanzi South and Matsheka in Lobatse. Other MPs without offices to date include those of Chobe, Lerala, Kanye South, Gabane and Goodhope. It is a fact and you know it Bra Stan. Yet only you of these MPs viewed the lack of office as sabotage and only you of the affected MPs decided to boycott the MP’s retreat in Phikwe. Akere you even went on record to say wena you are not attending the MP’s retreat in Phikwe because your constituents have no office at which to consult you. Like since when TK have you had time for consultations with your constituents at the office of the MP in Serowe West? Kana ke gore you politicians have this way of thriving on falsehoods and knowing that we, your voters, are often ignorant and in the dark about how a lot of things work. In the past you have again had to wait for your office to be ready after elections, and you never cried foul. As Big Brother’s prime nemesis would want to ask, why now? It must really be hard to suddenly find yourself in unfamiliar territory where you have to adjust to all manner of situations. I mean, from being driven around in a big black Beama to having to fend for yourself; and from having to shift seats to some obscure side of the isle in Parley, it must really be uneasy for you. Afterall tota wena you are not used to that opposition lifestyle where instead of your party dishing out the goodies for your upkeep and survival, you have to dig deep from your pocket to fund the movement you belong to. Bo Masimolole, Guma and Makgalemele were once in that situation at BMD and when they couldn’t cope, they retraced their steps. I know wena your pride won’t let you go back there, but if you regret quitting the BDP Bra Stan, you are making it easy for us to see it, with these recent outbursts. You must relax and take it easy as it comes. Stay calm and serve your new political movement and constituents without such unnecessary drama which in any case is paradoxical and borders on hypocrisy. You were at the helm of brewing and cooking everything that we consume today, and suddenly sitting on the other side of the fence and shouting how bad it all tastes makes you look and sound more like you are bitter to have been pushed to the outside.As I said earlier, you are a respectable and honourable man who often speaks a lot of sense on issues of national interest. Continue to speak for us in that manner without letting emotions get the better of you. Forget about everything past and focus on being the great man that I know you to be. Dorcus is gone. I hear she has even decided to quit politics for good. It’s a pity you quit the BDP because of her. If you are going to let that resultant bitterness define you, ene o tsweletse le her life and does not think much about you. So le wena let go Bra Stan, and lead us as only you can. Cheers brother.