Shashe

No doubt our leaders are fully engaged with trying to stop the corona virus getting to us. But the virus being in South Africa means it should be asssumed to be here already. What do we lose by closing schools now? We know how compromised our health already is. If we close schools now, we are significantly lessenning chances of dying and leaving them parent-less behind. Do we really want the elephants to have our country all to themselves within a few months' time? Let's close schools before those schools become virus sources!

The Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) government, which is, and has been in power since our country attained "independence" from Great Britain in 1966 has always told us that transparent ballot boxes are too expensive to buy for our general elections. Imagine how much more sensible it would be if the money now ear-marked for purchase of Gripen fighter jets were to be used for purchase of such transparent ballot boxes. The problem, of course is that transparent ballot boxes would make it extremely difficult to temper with the contents undetected, something that the BDP would never countenance! Now that the Court of Appeal (CoA) has legitimised the BDP government by refusing to hear the Umbrella for Democratic Change (UDC) petitions, I wonder why the UDC doesn't just publish what it found to be "irregularities" in the disputed 2019 elections. If they do not want to "show their hand" when the horse has already bolted from the stables, so to speak, then ...

Newspaper columnists are most intriguing animals. In the run up to the October general elections many of them alleged that financial and other help that South African "billionaires" were extending to the Umbrella for Democratic Change (UDC) political grouping and its leader, Advocate Duma Boko, was a loan to be repaid AFTER ELECTIONS through what they called "the vast mineral and other wealth that Botswana is endowed with". They claimed that Botswana has extremely vast resources which the South African donors to the UDC were "eyeing", and that should the UDC win the elections, these resources would be put at the disposal of the South African " billionaires" to take for a song. Of course rational people knew all along that these columnists are just Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) zealots masquerading as newspaper columnists. But by drumming on this nonsense, the BDP zealots did manage to turn even some educated voters against the UDC. Now that t...

We have just had an election in which the "losing  party" not only disputed the results, but actually lodged election petitions in enough parliamentary seats to make it the winning party, had those petitions succeeded at the courts of law. The election petitions were barred from being heard on some technicality. The nation was denied the right to hear the merits if any, of the complaints lodged by the losing party. The supporters of the party which has thus declared itself to be the winner demand that "we all forget about it and move on". How do we move on?  At the recent 2019 World Economic Forum in Davos the president of the now "ruling" party, who is the current "President" assured prospective international investors that the controversy surrounding our elections is nothing to be alarmed about. He went so far as to assure his listeners that should the courts rule that the elections be "re-run", he would comply. Nice Words, great st...

In any democratic setup, elections are not a game. They are a war, where combatants, being all the people, agree to put weapons aside and resolve their differences through the ballot box. Elections can't even be characterised as "war games" because war games, like all other games, subscribe to RULES. The only rule, if one can call it that, that the elections observe is that the weapons shall stay down only for as long as the ballot box process is demonstrably free, fair, and most importantly, credible TO ALL COMBATANTS. All other rules cannot, and should not matter in an election, because the whole purpose of an election is to choose a rule maker. A rule maker can only be chosen where there is a vacancy. That means that elections are a discontinuity. There is a point in the elections where it should be understood, using common sense, that there is no Government, no President, no courts, and therefore no rules except common sense and the need to avoid a resort to arms. T...