Botswana’s new government faces a deeper battle: dismantling entrenched BDP-era networks before bureaucratic resistance turns into full-scale political sabotage
The UDC may have entered office through the ballot, but it has not yet fully seized control of the state. That is the uncomfortable truth now confronting Botswana. Electoral victory alone does not dismantle the entrenched political machinery of a former ruling party, especially one that governed for decades and embedded its loyalists across the public sector.
What the UDC appears to have inherited is not a neutral bureaucracy, but a state apparatus still shaped by the instincts, loyalties, and culture of the BDP era. The danger is obvious: a government may sit in power while the real machinery of implementation remains in the hands of people with no political will to see it succeed.
This is the politics of cadre deployment.
In South African political practice, especially under the ANC, a cadre is not merely a civil servant. A cadre is a politically cultivated loyalist, placed in strategic positions to protect and advance the agenda of the ruling movement. Cadre deployment became a deliberate system through which party-aligned individuals were inserted into key positions across government departments, public enterprises, regulatory bodies, and other centres of influence.
Its function was never simply administrative. Its function was to make sure that even where the constitution spoke of the state, the ruling party remained in command.
This approach gained force through the ANC’s 1997 doctrine of controlling “all centres of power.” That strategy aimed to ensure that parliament, the executive, state institutions and public enterprises were occupied by reliable party hands rather than independent professionals. The result was the corrosion of institutional neutrality and the conversion of public administration into a political weapon.
South Africa’s experience should serve as a warning to Botswana. The names of Brian Molefe, Anoj Singh, and Matshela Koko became symbols of what happens when strategic institutions are captured by politically connected figures. What was defended in the language of transformation ended in allegations of state capture, institutional collapse, and public betrayal. In that system, party loyalty replaced competence, and the state began to serve networks instead of citizens.
Botswana must not walk blindly into the same trap.
When the UDC took office, it inherited a public sector built under years of uninterrupted BDP rule. Reports from early 2025 already pointed to the continued presence of BDP-linked figures in important state positions. That reality has deepened the suspicion that while political leadership has changed, the deeper structure of state control has not.
This is not a routine administrative issue. It is a question of who truly governs.
No government can effectively execute its mandate while strategic offices remain occupied by individuals tied to the old order or hostile to reform. In such an environment, bureaucratic autonomy can quickly mutate into bureaucratic resistance. The language of due process, institutional independence, and administrative discretion can be exploited as a shield for obstruction, delay, and quiet sabotage.
The recent transport fare controversy has only heightened those fears.
The publication of Government Gazette Notice №307 of 2026, announcing a steep rise in public transport fares, exposed what many now see as a dangerous fracture between elected authority and administrative action. The country was later informed that the fare increase had not been approved by Cabinet. President Advocate Duma Boko subsequently stated that the rates gazetted on March 31 differed from those sanctioned by the government, forcing the decision to be reversed a day later. Following the scandal, the Director of Road Transport Services, Mr Bokhutlo Modukanele, was suspended pending investigation.
This was not a harmless clerical mishap. It looked like a direct challenge to governmental authority.
When such a major decision affecting the public is published without Cabinet approval, it raises a deeply political question: who authorised it, and for what purpose? Was it incompetence, insubordination, or a calculated attempt to embarrass the new administration and test the limits of its control? Whatever the final answer, the incident exposed a state structure in which rogue action from within is not only possible, but politically dangerous.
That danger should not be underestimated.
If this culture is not confronted decisively, it will harden. Today, it may appear in isolated acts of defiance. Tomorrow it may take the form of coordinated bureaucratic resistance. By 2027 and 2028, such patterns could evolve into a broader campaign of internal destabilisation designed to weaken the UDC and shape the terrain ahead of the 2029 elections. That is how old regimes survive defeat: not always through open confrontation, but through institutional infiltration, passive aggression and quiet sabotage from within the state.
The UDC therefore faces a test greater than winning power. It must now secure power.
That means conducting a serious review of all strategic appointments across ministries, parastatals, government-linked companies, regulatory bodies and major decision-making centres. Those who are using public office to frustrate the national mandate of the elected government must be lawfully removed and replaced with competent individuals committed to professional service and democratic accountability.
This is not revenge. It is self-preservation by a government under siege from the residue of an old political order.
A ruling party that fails to neutralise hostile networks inside the state risks becoming symbolic leadership without executive authority. Botswana cannot afford a situation in which the old regime loses elections but continues to exercise influence through embedded loyalists in powerful offices. That is how reform is crippled, how public frustration grows, and how democratic change is hollowed out from within.
The UDC has won the presidency. What remains is the more difficult struggle of reclaiming the state itself.
