But its conspicuous Achilles’ heel is that its overrated president Otsweletse Moupo is dismally failing to emerge as a serious and credible leader who can usher in transformative opposition politics. Instead of confronting daunting strategic challenges facing his party and the rest of the opposition, he desperately resorts to denial, cheap excuses, intellectual dishonesty and hollow rhetoric.
Moupo pretends that he is fine, and that the problem only lies with his critics. He is obviously not fine. He is still unable to respond rapidly to challenges and ample opportunities. He remains a helpless hostage to a sterile Marxist dogma. He is failing to network with and enrol civil society groups and other critical agencies in the BNF “programme”. He is failing to supervise BNF MPs and coordinate their performance. Consequently, even though the BNF has 12 MPs, their performance is negligible and lacklustre. Without sound leadership, their strength and intelligence will not emanate and flourish. They will continue to work at cross-purposes and disappoint the electorate.
The BNF people should figure out what is specifically wrong with Moupo and remould him. He lacks proactivity, creative vision, and significant ambitions for the BNF and the nation. His lethargy and lack of social competence make it difficult for him to reach out to different segments of our society and market the BNF. A huge movement like the BNF cannot afford a shy and unconfident leader who lacks a sense of urgency.
Another problem is that Moupo has very little understanding of the psychology of good looks. He needs to be “fixed” so that he can project a presidential image. Most professional negotiators and investors cannot take him seriously in his looks. A modern leader should not look like a ragamuffin. He should exude assertiveness, seriousness, and a sense of power, poise and polish. Again, he should minimise the inappropriate laughter that undermines his professionalism.
Moupo is not achieving much for he has allowed a coterie of some university lecturers to hold him to ransom and confuse him. Many of the controversial decisions that this notorious cabal has taken have created perennial stress and tensions in the party. One such destructive force is Comrade Moore, a bull in a china shop. He has even gone to the extent of pronouncing against the merger proposal that a section of the Botswana Congress Party has suggested as a potential model for opposition unity. As long as Moupo allows the enigmatic Moore and others who pretend to have the monopoly of wisdom to overwhelm him, opposition unity will abort prematurely.
Moore, the communist scarecrow, is tragically suffering from the worst form of incurable intellectual chauvinism. It even causes him to look down upon his colleagues and the BCP. For him to claim he is not elitist when he consistently displays nauseating ideological condescension and delusion of grandeur is a despicable contradiction. He does not even have slightest respect for people he found in the BNF. Ironically, he has failed to make his communism work for the BNF.
When Moupo became BNF president, I spent more than a year without commenting on his wishy-washy performance. I thought he needed some time to learn the ropes before he could respectfully prove his worth. When it became patent that the fumbling fellow is a liability, I raised critical comments about his leadership hoping that he would think, learn, and act decisively to reconstruct the BNF into a party of change. Although he is fond of claiming that he accommodates criticism, he took offence and violently deployed members of his clique, including Moore, to bark at me. He did absolutely nothing to self-transform into a change agent. Consequently, many of the urgent issues and problems that I have long urged Moupo to address are still prevalent and are likely to get out of control.
These problems include the rapid decline of democratic ideals in the BNF. It is still misrun by misguided university lecturers, and their lackeys like Lekoko Kenosi and Mino Polelo. They are not using the BNF to transform society, but to achieve petty goals including ideological aggrandisement and political victimisation of their opponents. Moupo has no moral courage to raise his finger against the abuse of the party by these manipulative elites. They have converted him into an opportunist by pressuring him to relocate to Gaborone. He is now dangerously preoccupied with the twin goal of becoming an MP and retaining the BNF presidency. He has no ambition to groom the BNF into an alternative government. Even when bounteous opportunities present themselves, the BNF under Moupo will disappointingly remain an opposition party for good.
The party primary and Central Committee elections are misconducted by unscrupulous elements who are accountable to Moupo’s mini faction. Some of the functionaries have unprofessionally supported his unprincipled relocation to Gaborone West North. They depicted people who wished to contest with him as the enemies of the BNF and BDP collaborators. Worse still, a university-based agent who spearheaded Moupo’s campaign in Gaborone West North insidiously circulated a letter in which she mischieviously decampaigned Rhoda Sekgororoane. The purveyor of this toxic propaganda is actively seeking to be elected to the Central Committee. Because Moupo no longer cares about principles, he has condoned the self-seeking saboteurs’s perfidious plotting.
Another source of embarrassment is that the preparations for the forthcoming congress are dominated by an autocratic elite. When I expose this corruption and undemocratic actions, Moupo rushes to town to label me a “fake academic”, a “pseudo-intellectual with no vision”. His ideological twin brother Moore, who is hugely obsessed with anachronistic utopia, calls me a “quack and charlatan who knows nothing”. These negative expressions clearly show that these counterfeit leaders are overly sensitive to fair comment and criticism.
The main problem with Moupo and the embattled Moore is that they have been tragically deceived into thinking that rigid identification with Marxism is a mark of intellectual and philosophical sophistication. They are victims of insulated listening. This means they cannot listen to anything that does not sound Marxist. The petty ideologues can’t realise that the world has become complex and cannot be narrowly understood from textbook Marxism. If at all they are political gurus, I challenge them to devise theories that are culturally sensitive to local/BNF politics. I have very little respect for adults who are incapable of independent and creative thinking. Why should they continue to peddle banal ideas without revising and appropriating them to their dynamic environment? Their perpetual regurgitation of barren Marxism is a shameful act of political plagiarism.
When addressing a political rally recently, Moupo virulently accused me of contradictions in my writing, saying this would harm my credibility. This is a false and malicious accusation because when I openly called for opposition unity, I never committed myself to condoning undemocratic proclivities in opposition parties. If Moupo thinks democracy and political morality should be suspended for the sake of opposition unity, then the BNF should be left alone to mess itself up. Unity should never be implemented at the expense of sacrosanct principles and ethical conduct. Political corruption, ideological imperialism, factionalism and elite dominance should be radically obliterated if genuine and long lasting unity is to be achieved. Otherwise the opposition would perish in a catastrophic political inferno.
Finally, I have profound interest in the BNF and other political parties. If Moupo, Moore and their henchmen think I have no right to comment on the problems they have created in the BNF, just because I am not its member, they are terribly wrong. I will speak out and talk back until they democratise the BNF and humbly deliver it to the masses who keep it going.
Log Raditlhokwa
Gaborone
