James Olesitse: Marxist, prag matist, farmer, politician...

| Friday March 7, 2008 00:00

 

British novelist, George Orwell, did not have Palapye in mind when he wrote his futuristic novel, 'Nineteen eighty four'. In his celebrated book, Orwell predicts political Armageddon and doomsday in the year 1984.

Nineteen eighty four in Palapye was very much the antithesis of the Orwelian eighty-four.

Nineteen eighty four was a watershed year in Palapye. It was around 1984 when the village had its own second revolution -the first being the opening of Morupule coal mine - and the second being the setting up of Morupule Power Station in the early 80's.

Companies settled in the village. Contract workers descended in our village. They came from far and wide. Some were South African, Polish, Belgian and many Batswana from other areas in the country.

Overnight, the feudal setup was shaken. Residential accommodation was in demand. New shops opened up. Local football teams were awash with talent from other places. The local economy was in full throttle. Everything in the village seemed to take a completely different complexion. Palapye was on the geyser.

In the wave of people who came in droves to Palapye there were some who came in search of employment in the new companies that had set up in the village.

Amongst this group was James Olesitse. He too came looking for a job. Well, yes, a job.  Not from the mines. Not from the construction companies.

He was looking for a job from the workers; from the unemployed; from the village peasant farmers.

Nineteen eighty four was an election year. 'Palapye was very small and largely feudal back then. But the BNF leadership chose me to come here and set up the party structures. There was no BNF, no opposition to speak of in the then Palapye. I started everything from scratch,' he reminisces as we chat in his office, situated in Palapye's burgeoning extensions area which is a far cry from the Palapye he found when he arrived.

Olesitse came to Palapye when young men of my age were undergoing physiological changes. As freshmen, sophomores and juniors at various secondary schools, many of us were going through a process of self discovery.

After a sprinkling of some reading of Bediako Asare's 'Rebel', Allan Paton's 'Cry the beloved country', Chinua Achebe's 'Things fall apart' and some Russian Novosti Press pamphlets brought to us by Steve Boko - Duma's father - at Madiba Secondary School in Mahalapye. This raised fervour and interest in many things.

We started questioning some things. Others even wanted to cast away their Christian names.

Before some of us could figure out what 'ecology' or 'specific heat capacity' was, one of the older boys dragged me to a freedom square at Ngwato Bar where we found Olesitse delivering one of his political stump speeches.

It was not so much what he said but how he said it. There was a stark resemblance of his voice to my history teacher at Madiba Secondary School. A voice that would today be described as a reincarnate of a toss up between Barry White and former American Ambassador to Botswana Joseph Huggins. 

School fees were a concern to many struggling families and at that rally I remember him speaking himself into a trance when he talked about school fees. At that early age I discovered some striking similarities between a religious sect and politics. There was a group of devoted people that seemed to follow Olesitse, they seemed to like him intensely. Whenever you came to his rallies you were sure to find them clapping and laughing as their men spoke.

As young children growing up, our parents used to point us to successful young men and women upon whose lives we were sternly told that we should model ourselves around their exemplary studious lives that led to some respected career in the eyes of the community.

Invariably, these role models would be model students who gained professional qualifications.

With us boys, Keineetse Keineetse and the late attorney, Joe Malatsi were the real deal amongst others. Keineetse or 'Comrade' as he was known had this rhetoric that swept us off our feet.

Olesitse was not introduced to us by the bookish fellows. It was the blue-collar guys at Morupule and the power station that waxed lyrical songs about him. They said he knew things polemical, Marxist and philosophical.

Whenever there was any cynicism expressed it would be easily dissolved when people talked of how Olesitse had achieved a major feat by writing a 'book', The Enemies of Our People. The cynicism would end right there.

In this pamphlet, Olesitse castigates the ruling BDP for turning itself into the enemy of the people that it purports to lead by conniving with multinationals to impoverish Batswana.

It has been 24 years since Olesitse came to Palapye, knocking at people's hearts and consciences and he still lives in hope; hope that one day they will employ him as their parliamentarian.

In two and half decades Palapye has transformed. Olesitse himself has changed political homes from his native BNF to co-found the now defunct Social Democratic Party with the late Mareledi Giddie, back to BNF and when BNF imploded into two factions, he bolted with others to form the BCP.

He has had many sparring political opponents with whom he fought on the Palapye canvas, amongst them, President Festus Mogae ,the now Palapye Kgosi, Klaas Motshidisi, former minister, Boyce Sebetela, BNF's Gabotsoswe Lebitsa, Sentsho Malatsi with whom he would renew the rivalry that would see the two, together with debutant, Master Goya, slug it out in a half way fight for Palapye.

In 24 years, everything has changed, including Olesitse. But one thing that remains constant, he says, is the fire in his belly.

'You see politics is not a job. To me this is a calling. I feel so passionate about changing the lives of people. To me politics is about making a difference. I believe Batswana can live better and that is one single most contribution I want to make. It has to be done and that is why I am not slowing down.'

On the notice board in his office there is a motivational note that seems to characterize his political indefatigable spirit: a winner never quits, a quitter never wins'.

Magdeline Mogae, President Festus Mogae's sister is one of those people who worked with Olesitse during his days in the BNF and SDP.

'When we were dissatisfied with the BNF handling of Olesitse's candidature in the 1994 general elections I was one of those people that left with him to Social Democratic Party. He came back to BNF while I stayed in the SDP, subsequently he joined BCP and I remained until I quit politics altogether,' said Mogae.

Mogae wouldn't want to talk about politics anymore because she has moved on in her religious life.

But she still finds the breath to talk about Olesitse's perseverence. 'He has contested in many elections and has not won a parliamentary seat but he is still going. How many can sustain such rigour? Asks Mogae rhetorically.

Former BNF central committee member, and now a party elder, Obonetse Menyatso, who is now retired and spends most of his time at farm at Lwale, some 10 kilometres west of Sefhare, lightens up when he talks about Olesitse. Despite their political differences in the BCP and BNF, he finds superlative adjectives to describe Olesitse. According to Menyatso, Olesitse's life was defined by zeal and the desire to learn.

'Mokolwane yoo one a rata go ithuta thata - that fellow was taken up with wanting to learn'.

It was this strong desire to learn that led him to write a pamphlet, 'the enemies of our people.'

Some people, Menyatso said, criticized the pamphlet, including Kenneth Koma, but he saw nothing but a studious and committed cadre.

Menyatso and Olesitse met in the 70's. He said he got to know Olesitse more when they attended study groups together, addressed rallies together and they became even closer when Olesitse represented BNF in Tswapong North when Menyatso was in Tswapong South.

'Olesitse is a very articulate man who knows how to put his point across to a mixed audience. More than anything, he is such a good listener,' says Menyatso.

Olesitse is aware of this asset, but he believes that he is not only a good listener but a practical man.

He joined politics after he was fired from his job as a journalist working with the then Department of Information and Broadcasting.

Records are scanty on about why he was fired, but he believes that his loss of employment was politically motivated.

As a young journalist, he was simply attracted to politics of liberation. In the country, he wrote a lot about the politics of the then doyen of opposition politics, Dr Kenneth Koma.

He participated in study groups that were inclined to ZANU, ANC and other liberation movements. In the region, he wrote about the politics of the liberation.

The department of information was then under BDP secretary general, Daniel Kwelagobe and he said they made it clear to him that they were uncomfortable with his writing that did not toe the line.

Within a short space of time he was given the boot. Soon after he left, he joined Printing and Publishing as a Lithographer before he was convinced to leave his well paying job to take a political adventure at Serowe Brigades after some persuasion from Patrick Van Rensburg and Mareledi Giddie.

'When I left this job to join the brigades, I gave up everything. There was no job security, no good pay. You were not even assured of meals. At the brigades, there was no rank. No students, no teachers. We were all colleagues.

'Serowe was so backward, and yet it offered me the education that no university could ever teach me. Serowe provided me the laboratory to test anything from tribal organisation to tribal power relations.

'I came to appreciate how Bangwato relate and administer all the villages and people in the region.

People who look at these dynamics from a distance think Serowe is tribalistic, and yet I have never found an integrated society such as Serowe.

'To me, Serowe provided me with a laboratory upon which I could test all the theories that I had imbibed from my study groups.

'In our study groups, we were dealing with serious philosophical questions such as education with production, and my work in the Brigades provided a proper test case and proved the viability of this model'.

It was while he was in Serowe that Olesitse got involved in cooperatives and went on to serve them on the global stage.

'I rose to the position of president of the cooperatives in Botswana. I even became president of the African chapter and worked at the Nairobi office for five years.

'I saw how the cooperatives empower people - the common people - to be involved in complex issues of stocks and shares.

'Government today talks of privatisation, while the population does not even understand what a share is. Cooperatives could have brought the public up to speed with some of these concepts with their involvement in cooperatives but this was resisted as Marxist ideas and robbed Batswana of an opportunity to empower themselves.

Almost everything that he imbibed in his Marxist study groups he had an opportunity to implement, at least at a localised level.

'In our political discussions we talked about irrigation and agriculture as a major sector that does not only lead to food self sufficiency but to creation of employment. 

'I had a farm in Serowe at which I practiced irrigation farming and I was able to feed the Serowe community with all sorts of vegetables. I employed people and residents did not have to buy vegetables from other places as they do now.

'You see, I have always disagreed with the view propounded by President Mogae that we can source goods from wherever they are cheap. This is counterproductive. It is precisely because of this view that agriculture has stagnated. We are slowly turning ourselves into a nation of buyers and as result, there was a Botswana generation of farmers that is now becoming extinct.

The farmers are now being replaced by buyers who do not have the skills nor the desire to engage in agriculture.

'I believe that theory emanates from practice and theory should in turn serve practice,' says Olesitse.

One of the criticisms that Menyatso has about Olesitse is that he is a dyed in the wool letftist, who is either revising his beliefs or he is an opportunist.

'I know him to be a Marxist. What is he doing in a party that is, to all intents and purposes, a constellation of reactionary elements? I am puzzled that such a well drilled cadre could be hob-nobbing with the BCP, a party that is at best reformist. The answer lies somewhere. What is it if it is not opportunism?' says Menyatso.

As if in defense, Olesitse talks about the great lessons that he has learnt from his political mentor, the late Kenneth Koma.

'Koma and Serowe were my great teachers. Koma taught me pragmatism. You ought to be real. Koma brought leftist politics to this country at a time when the country was feudal.

If he were not a pragmatist he would have discarded his lifelong project because Botswana was not ready, but he was a realist and he soldiered on. I am another realist and that is why I am where I am,' he says.

Olesitse might be causing political rumpus in places like Gaborone, Serowe and now Palapye, but where he comes from in the villages of Majwaneng and Ratholo, there is some kind of excitement with villagers looking on as their own son creates his own political trail.

'To many of us who grew up with him, it is quite a surprise that James is a politician. As young boys growing up, James was shy and an introvert. Even his teachers at Ratholo Primary will tell you so. We used to play tennis over there,' said Leabaneng Bogopa, Olesitse's boyhood friend and neighbour in Ratholo, pointing at a disused playground in front of the remains of what used to be Olesitse's compound before he moved to Gaborone, Serowe and ultimately settling in Palapye.

Bogopa says in his mind, Olesitse is suited for a career in academia. 'He was bright at school. When we went to Moeng College for secondary school he could not come with us despite his good pass that got him an enrolment. He could not go because of school fees.

'With the disappointment of not getting a secondary school placement Olesitse moved to Gaborone where he worked and studied part time to complete his J.C and I understand he even completed his O'levels. I think he did other post secondary courses too,' said Bogopa.

In Mmamohadane lands, outside the village of Majwaneng where Olesitse's uncles and the bulk of his family still live, he is regarded as the special one.

Over a calabash of setopoti, a traditional brew made out of fermented water melons, old man RraTapiso talks about his nephew in glowing terms.

'Leina la gagwe ke Gakemolatlhe,' quips RraTapiso as he gulps a sip of Setopoti. Rona re ne re mmitsa Lemphozana,' interjects his aunt MmaBonang.

Everyone wants to say something about him as nostalgia fills this compound, but old man RraTapiso takes over.

His pitch is that they are what they are because of their nephew. 'Every now and then he comes here to plough for us. It is only now that he is busy with his political campaigns that he has not come. I am blind and he makes sure that I have food to eat. He always consults us on everything. When he joined BNF, he told us and when he left to join BCP he informed us.

'We wanted to take all our children to go and vote for him in Palapye so that Batswana can also enjoy what we enjoy from this boy but he stopped us telling us that it is not allowed.

'He has been so good to us. The least I could do was to vote for him. I think he will do well. He will come and tell us,' says his elderly uncle, Bonang Olesitse.