A late friend who was wont to quote 20th century Russian revolutionaries at the slightest provocation would have said of this week: “There are decades where nothing happens, and there are weeks decades happen.”
He would have been quoting Vladimir Lenin, of course, amazed by seemingly sudden developments in our region and elsewhere in the world. He wasn’t a leftist in the red T-shirt-wearing-monopoly-capital-bashing kind of way; he considered himself centre-left — a social democrat.
Had he been born in the UK, he once quipped, he would have probably voted for Tony Blair and Gordon Brown’s Labour Party, but never Jeremy Corbyn’s.
I thought of this late friend and how he would have reacted as news broke that the Conservative Party — the Labour Party’s main UK rival — has elected a black woman with Nigerian roots as its new leader.
Kemi Badenoch takes over from former prime minister Rishi Sunak, who was forced out after leading the Conservative Party to a crushing defeat at the hands of Labour earlier in 2024.
Like most of our peers who grew up in an apartheid South Africa, who would have described a Conservative Party-ruled UK of the time as a “valuable ally”, my friend dismissed the party as reactionary and ultraconservative.
Yet over the past four decades, not only has it given the UK its first three women prime ministers — Margaret Thatcher, Theresa May and Liz Truss — it now has a woman of Yoruba ancestry as its leader and, presumably, future candidate for the premiership.
The news would have surprised my friend not only because of what he generally thought of the Conservatives, but because this development seems to buck the international trend of rising identity politics and narrow nationalism.
But perhaps the news that would have surprised my friend most this week — as it did many of us — was the dramatic fall of the Botswana Democratic Party after 58 years in office.
That president Mokgweetsi Masisi and the BDP were going to have it tough in the elections was obvious to anyone with a fleeting interest in political developments in Gaborone. But very few believed the BDP would lose by a huge margin. The race was always thought to be close.
Like most of the Southern African region, and the continent at large, the Botswana economy has not been performing well — leaving many of its citizens in economic hardship.
Botswana is the second-largest natural diamond producer in the world, and its recent economic woes are due to a downturn in global diamond demand.
With the country having failed to diversify its economy, the lack of demand for diamond exports saw unemployment rise to more than 27%.
One great thing about the outcome of the Botswana elections is that once again a Southern African country has had a ruling party suffer a defeat in a democratic contest, and accepted the outcome without resorting to fraudulent activities or even violence in a bid to stay in power
As we had seen in South Africa, the UK, India and many other countries that have held elections in 2024, voters tend to punish ruling parties for the economy’s poor performance.
Add to that Masisi’s unseemly persecution of his predecessor Ian Khama, his government’s squabbles with De Beers — the country’s major investor — as well as the shortage of basic medicine, and you have enough for the voters to turn their backs on the ruling party.
Considering that since the 1960s, Botswana elections were considered a mere formality, where the BDP and its candidates only needed to be on the ballot box to win, what happened this week can only be described as a “week where decades happened”.
But what then becomes of Botswana under its new government?
The Umbrella for Democratic Change (UDC) — an alliance of several opposition parties, not too dissimilar to what ActionSA, the DA and others tried to do here with their Moonshot Pact ahead of the general elections — won the majority of the 61 parliamentary seats. Its leader, Duma Boko, will be Botswana’s first president not to come from the BDP.
They have a tough job ahead of them. Boko rose in popularity by promising job creation, healthcare reform, fixing the economy and fighting youth unemployment.
But as he would have learnt from the experiences of other countries in the region that have had big changes — whether of ruling political parties or presidents — that removing the incumbent is the easier part. Turning things round proves to be harder.
One great thing about the outcome of the Botswana elections is that once again a Southern African country has had a ruling party suffer a defeat in a democratic contest, and accepted the outcome without resorting to fraudulent activities or even violence in a bid to stay in power.
Namibia is the next country in the region to have elections. It is unlikely the ruling Swapo will be ousted, but whatever the outcome, one hopes the losers will be as magnanimous in defeat as Masisi was this week.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.