Pamphlet No 1 is the most important political work of post independent Botswana. It made Kenneth Koma the most important political personality after Seretse Khama.

Koma's pamphlet was utilitarian academic work that offered an assessment of the condition of the Bechuanaland Protectorate at the time it was written.

At the same time it laid out a philosophy, programme, and mode of organisation that could help Batswana to move forward from virtual submission to neo-colonialism to the embrace of the opportunities that a decolonised southern Africa had to offer.

It had been adopted as the 'guiding' document of the Botswana National Front. In practice, it was much more than a guiding document. It was a statement of an alternative ideology to that which was offered by the mainstream anti-colonial political movements of the day, among them the Botswana Peoples Party, the Botswana Democratic Party and the Botswana Independence Party.

Pamphlet No 1, even as it did not outwardly announce itself as such, was clearly a socialist document.

Its author would have been a Bolshevik, as opposed to the Mensheviks, who reneged on the social democratic programme that fought Tsarist Russia in order to contemplate a Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

He would have been a Trotskyite in the later years when Stalin sought to corrupt the gains made in the 'October 17' socialist revolution. And he would have been a Maoist in the era when the Soviets sought to appropriate ownership of the socialist revolution that would also assist the movement for independence in the colonised African countries.

He arrived in the Bechuanaland Protectorate, a socialist, even if he might have espoused a variety of tendencies among the Marxist revolutionaries of his time in South Africa, Eastern Europe and Africa.

He understood, and attempted on his arrival on the political stage immediately after 'independence' to seek a Botswana united front that would be anti-imperialist, also standing opposed to backward feudalism of the type that Botswana typified in the run up to nominal independence of 1966.

As it turned out, the independence movement of Botswana did not arrive at any systematic discussion of the nature of 'imperialism' or 'feudalism' as they manifested themselves in Botswana, but it quickly rushed to the more immediate practical goal of receiving independence from a tired colonial Britain, which had suffered fatal bruises from the African anti colonial movement of the late 1950's.

And so, 'anti -imperialism and anti feudalism' all appeared as one under the banner of 'anti-colonialism'.

In that fashion, the Botswana Democratic Party was to succeed in wearing the cloak of the 'nationalists' who agitated for 'independence', even if they did so in the furtherance of the continued allegiance to the Queen. The BPP and BIP fought and were unable to take advantage of their early start in agitating for decolonisation, leaving the BDP to gallop to British sponsored electoral victory in 1965 and 1966.

The BPP, under Phillip Matante was suspicious of Koma's perceived inclinations towards soviet socialism, even as his party received assistance from Kwame Nkrumah, himself a 'communist', an author and political organiser of impeccable credentials.

Lenyeletse Koma believes that Mpho was friendlier to socialist ideology because of his experience at the African National Congress of South Africa, which allied itself to, among others, the South African Communist Party.

It is a mistaken view, but nevertheless, not the subject of discussion in this contribution to an assessment of the state of the opposition as Botswana receives Ian Khama in Festus Mogae's place.

Because the 'united front', presumably embracing all 'patriotic forces' including the BPP and the BPP, the Botswana National Front was founded.

It was of Botswana. It grew to be national. But never was it at 'Front' in the sense that Koma, or the global liberation movement would have wanted.

Its only claim to being a 'front' was that it had a 'women's wing' and a 'youth wing', all of which were features of any conventional mass party such as the BDP or the BPP.

It might be credibly argued that then, the BPP enjoyed greater support among the working class among the workers in commercial centres of Lobatse and Francistown, the Botswana Meat Commission, Tati Concessions and Rhodesia Railways, in the early days of independence; support which the 'front' perceived as only incidental to its quest for the achievement of its 'minimum programme' as envisaged in Pamphlet No 1.

When the Front succeeded in achieving enough popular support to take five seats in parliament in 1984, including its leader, 'K.K', its revolutionary fervour gave way to a parliamentarianism that leaned much more towards big business, capitalism, imperialism and feudalism than towards the working classes in the urban centres and the rural hinterlands.

Socialism was replaced with the capitalist rhetoric that promoted a 'mixed economy' relying on foreign direct investment as a means towards economic diversification.

It did not matter that this approach came with suppression of wages in labour and in fact with prevention of the right of workers to organise.

Perhaps the 'Front' had missed thorough discussion of that pervasive theoretical problem that confronted the liberation movement ever since the October Revolution: the matter of the possibility of establishing socialism with one stroke of a worker led revolution, or whether it was mandatory to achieve first the national democratic revolution, and then to seek socialist transformation.

That would lead to permanent fixation of the BNF with 'the minimum programme' despite Koma's contemplation of this problem in the pamphlet, 'The second phase of the African revolution'.

He had already discussed 'Chieftainship in crisis', there theorising about how the prevalent institution of chieftainship could be harnessed to counteract dominance of Ngwato chieftainship and to exploit other sections of chieftainship at Kgatleng under Kgosi Lincwe, GaMalete under Kgosi Mokgosi and Ngwaketse under Kgosi Bathoen.

The Front achieved popularity electoral success under that strategy leading to 1984, but failed to make the theoretical turn that would take the organisation beyond nationalism to a more vigorous socialist programme that would give greater focus to issues of the working class.

So the 'Front' attracted to itself only those spokespersons of the petty bourgeoisie, most of whom can only be described as disgruntled cadres of the 'left' at the Botswana Democratic Party. These were former cabinet ministers, permanent secretaries and senior civil servants.

They virtually took the party over, furthering at best the programme of parliamentarianism and apologising that 'violent revolution' was not on the agenda of the BNF, as if it had ever been!

The intellectuals of the capitalist type took the short cut to membership of the supreme organs of the Front, needing only to gain a parliamentary or council seat in order to gain a position on the Central Committee.

From 1984 to 1998 they gained ascendancy in the organisation, finally leading to the fracas and mayhem that led to the Palapye debacle that brought the Botswana Congress Party into existence, stealing 11 parliamentarians from the BNF.

All of them, with the exception of Joseph Kavindama of the Okavango were to survive the 1999 general election after Ketumile Masire hade been compelled to hand Festus Mogae the presidency of the country and the party.

Masire had survived the worst of the challenge of the opposition for parliament based political power from 1980 to 1998.

All that Mogae needed to subvert any further scares was to follow the Schlemner's assessment of what needed to be done to put the BDP back on track.

The consultant recommended a younger, schooled leadership that could cope with the demands of '21st century globalisation'.

Mogae, with his technocratic experience in the field of economy would act as Botswana's ambassador in the increasingly complicated sphere of international trade.

The Seretse name would be invoked to refurbish rural support not only in the Central District, but also in the bourgeoning urban centres in Palapye, Selebi Phikwe, Orapa and Maun and even Francistown that fell under the influence of Ngwato royalty.

The opposition, reeling from the consequences of Palapye and ideological drift to the right and to Domkrag, lost the vibrancy that came to it on account of the socialist rhetoric of the pre-1984 period.

The opposition suffered dramatic reversals in 1999, returning to the numbers of 1984 in parliament, though the national assembly had grown in size and seats.

The BNF lost two of its Gaborone constituencies, one to the BCP and the other to the BDP. Francistown crashed to the BDP as did Phikwe.

In the last month, there has been every indication that even the marginal gains that were made by the BNF in the non-urban centres will be lost in 2009.

In addition to internal wrangling at the BNF, perhaps the single most expensive blunder of the opposition was the demonstration of its unwillingness to achieve the 'unity' that they all pronounce to be the basis of their existence.

None of the opposition parties will commit to dissolution into a united political party that will prosecute 'the second stage of the African revolution' that will pay particular attention to the protection and preservation of the political, economic and social rights of the working classes.

Whenever the subject arises, there will be excises related to the size of this or that party, loss of names and history, and arithmetic calculations of which party has the right to stand where for parliament or council.

The electorate has now seen through the veiled interest of the leadership of the opposition which is only interested in its stay in parliament and not in the pursuit of the interests of the working class.

The workers have now figured out that the 'struggle' is not about their interests, but about the interests of their leaders and the employers and capitalists for whom they work.

And so, Ian Khama inherits a political playing field which will see more of the battle between the BNF and the BCP for 'opposition supremacy' but not governance of the country.

They will eat each other up until they are level. And when they wake up to reality, Khama will be ready to hand over to his Vice President in 2019. A good number of the spokespersons of the current opposition will be invited to Khama's team, and they will accept.

The stage is set. There is already an overwhelming body of law that will lay the basis for the kind of regime that is on the ascendancy: the National Security Act, the Intelligence Act, the Penal Code, BDF Act, the Police Services Act, Official Secrets Act and several others which will guarantee the fourth republic, as the Zambians would call it, access to the private lives of citizens, enabling it to carry out a 'royalist military dictatorship' that even Seretse Khama would not have imagined or cherished.

The system of justice has not, in a manner similar to that of the South Africans in the apartheid era, demonstrated an independence and commitment to justice that would temper the excesses of the executive branch of government.

The overwhelming majority of the ruling party in parliament - in the absence of a viable opposition - holds out no real buffer against executive abuse of the bill of rights and the institutions that should protect the citizen against an all powerful government.

The press has effectively abolished itself, acceding to measures of self regulation that give non-practitioners and cabinet ministers access to control of the day to day operations of the so-called 'media'.

The manner of transformation of the state press to a public enterprise has taken the form of that which exists in Zimbabwe and South Africa inherited from the racist regimes of the past.

So we have in law a 'public press' which for all intents and purposes is owned and controlled by the BDP government. It is the largest section of the press, enjoying limitless budgetary allocations of taxpayer's money.

Good. This will allow the working class of Botswana an opportunity to craft its own path to political justice.