n his first, foot-in-the-mouth incident of 2026, President Duma Boko used part of his podium time to explain the concept of ‘social contract.’ He did so on the basis of public perception that his government is failing to meet its obligations in terms of a ‘social contract’ that the Umbrella for Democratic Change (UDC) entered into with voters in the 2024 general election. To whittle down Boko’s more detailed legalistic definition into digestible bits, a social contract is actually no more than a legally unenforceable gentleman’s agreement. On such basis, government is not legally obliged to deliver on its electoral pledges. As opposed to a social contract, a legal contract is enforceable and more importantly, spells out penalties that a defaulting parties would be subjected to.
While there has been public outrage over Boko’s statement, the fact of the matter is that he was right with regard to how a social contract operates. Thus, the actual problem is not what he said but how democracy works against the interests of voters.
For five or so minutes every five years inside a polling booth, eligible voters get a chance to hire and fire candidates in a general election. The only legal contract they sign is with the Independent Electoral Commission and not the political parties or independent candidates that they vote for. In contract law, there is thus no legally binding agreement between the parties and voters – only a non-binding gentleman’s agreement. The absence of a written agreement means that if the elected parties or candidates don’t deliver on their promises, the only option voters have is casting their vote again in the next election.
Going back to 1966 and only until five years ago, elected officials in MPs and councillors could happily cross the floor between parties. When that happened, voters were helpless precisely because there was no legal contract that compelled these elected officials to remain in the party that they had used to get into office.
An unwritten agreement also gives parties and candidates leeway to reinterpret this agreement by exploiting more loopholes. Perhaps the most perfect example to illustrate the latter point is when former President Mokgweetsi Masisi reinterpreted an electoral promise that the Botswana Democratic Party made ahead of the 2019 elections. Then, the BDP made a non-legally-binding promise to create jobs. After the election and in response to being constantly reminded of that promise, Masisi said that what the party actually meant was that it would create the right economic environment for the private sector to create jobs and not that it would create such jobs itself. A legal contract would have used language very precise regarding who would create such jobs, leaving no room for ambiguity.
There is another set of players in electoral democracy who also expect favourable treatment from the government – oligarchs. Unlike the mass of voters, these players enter into an enforceable legal contract not with voters but the winning party. The wording of this contract is very precise and there are very well-defined penalty clauses. On the basis of the latter, if one party defaults on its legal obligations, it can seek legal recourse, annexing the legal agreement as evidence that it has been cheated out of what it is legally entitled to.
From when the UDC took over the reins of power, the president and his ministers have been signing legal contracts, some a direct result of behind-the-scenes political horse-trading. The horse-trading happened with a unique set of circumstances. Well before elections and far from madding freedom-square crowds, political leaders cut deals with oligarchs about how the latter would give back in return for the funding they got. At this point, there are no legal contracts but there is clear understanding on the part of politicians that, never having been angels, the oligarchs have a variety of means to get revenge if they are cheated. They can collapse an economy, stir up civil disturbance, topple a government by force or assassinate the leader.
It has been credibly alleged that the president of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Laurent Kabila, was assassinated because he went back on a gentleman’s agreement involving the country’s vast mineral wealth that he made with oligarchs. Voters have no leverage because they generally don’t have the means to collapse an economy, stir up civil disturbance, topple a government or assassinate the leader for failure to honour a gentleman’s agreement. Post-election, the gentleman’s agreements are given legal character by signing formal contracts that can be used as evidence in a court of law should the new government fail to deliver on its promises. Whereas political parties deal with voters (through largely through rallies, media and manifestoes) as a mass with no legal character, they deal with each business entity on a one-on-one basis.
On the basis of the latter, it is for oligarchs that democracy works perfectly. However, they also have to maintain the illusion that democracy works for everyone to keep the masses happy and make them feel important when they are really not. The latter explains why entities that these oligarchs control and fund lavishly (media, think tanks, political parties and NGOs) heavily promote the myth of democracy being the best political system. Those who don’t vote are typically characterised as ‘irresponsible’ when it is actually the height of irresponsibility to participate in an elaborate ritual that doesn’t guarantee a positive outcome for you.
Democracy is also attractive for oligarchs because while they can’t capture the millions of voters (a task they have outsourced to politicians), they can easily capture the far fewer political officeholders. As a rule of thumb, these oligarchs are vehemently opposed to genuinely patriotic leaders whose pro-people policies threaten their economic interests and routinely topple such leaders. After failing to oust Brazil’s socialist president, Dilma Rousseff, through elections, the country’s elite power class, including media oligarchs, connived with American corporate interests to topple her through parliament. Assassination is always an option where a leader can’t be captured. Patrice Lumumba of Zaire and Thomas Sankara of Burkina Faso were murdered because their pro-people policies threatened the economic interests of mostly Zionist oligarchs.
Upon conviction that UDC is not a gem diamond they thought it was but a fake diamond hewn from the bottom of a Coke bottle, some voters have already made a firm, anti-UDC resolution for the 2029 general election. The irony is that none of the parties they want to replace UDC with has ever expressed any aversion to electoral democracy as a system of government. The result will be that whatever party replaces UDC will also get into a social contract with voters. That contract, as the UDC’s and the BDP before it, will place no legal obligations on the new government to deliver on its electoral pledges. As the UDC and the BDP before it, the same government will sign legal contracts with oligarchs that the new government delivers on its promises.
Democracy’s main attraction to the Zionist oligarchs who control the world is that that they can manipulate its processes and systems to produce an outcome they want. In that regard, if Burkina Faso were to hold elections, France would easily find puppet opposition leaders whose campaigns it would fund lavishly to enhance their chances of winning. After such leaders win, France would regain control of the country’s vast mineral wealth. For decades, Yoweri Museveni has rigged both the electoral process and the vote and has ruled Uganda with an iron fist. However, he (like Rwanda’s Paul Kagame) is safe because he is facilitating the plunder of the Democratic Republic of Congo’s mineral wealth by western corporations. Museveni just rigged an election in which he literally unleashed terror on his opponent but major western media organisations are not reporting that and no western leader has criticised him.
Holding elections is itself not adequate if the result is a government that is not subservient to western interests. An election which produces a leader that the west can’t control was ‘rigged’ and where western intelligence agencies don’t foment some kind of civil strife, they will connive with local operatives to topple such leader.
Rather obsess over democracy, countries across the globe should be exploring alternatives to it – like the Chinese model. However, they have been duped into believing that democracy is the best system. To their credit, the Zionist sociopaths who control the world through democracy have, through all the powerful institutions and platforms they control, done so good a job in maligning non-democratic systems (that obviously won’t give them backdoor access to a country’s administrative apparatus) that replacing democracy is not even seen as an option.