Literally "tie your feet up!", and "stop following me!" or even 'get lost!'. The decision is an expression of the feeling of the BDP central committee and party president following the announcement to form a new party by the faction, and after the faction served the president with a list of demands. The central committee found the demands simply 'untenable' and 'outrageous' and refused to meet any of them. If the Barata-Phathi had hoped that Khama and the central committee would even have the slightest intention to meet with them, then they were dead wrong. The central committee was actually incensed that this group of 'dissidents' dared to meet even after the committee issued a warning that the meeting they were planning to hold on Saturday at the Big Five Lodge in Mogoditshane was illegal as "it fell outside the institutional framework of the Party Structures, and was not sanctioned by the party constitution". So the party leadership resolved to tell the faction "voetsek!"
"The central committee has therefore resolved that organisers of the new breakaway party and the convenors of the so-called Barata-Phathi meeting who took part in the unlawful assembly held last Saturday in Mogoditshane, which includes six sitting Members of Parliament (MPs) should surrender their BDP membership cards within 48 hours to the main party office in Gaborone," the central committee says in a statement issued following a crisis meeting it held on Saturday and on Monday. BDP spokesperson Comma Serema told a local radio station yesterday morning that even those 'who made tea' and any sympathisers who are BDP members who attended the faction meeting should heed the instruction, as failing to do so will lead the BDP to conclude that such people remain members of the party and are therefore subject to the party and its disciplinary authority.
