Route taken to finally oust ‘unshaken’ Butale
Mompati Tlhankane | Monday August 7, 2023 06:00
Butale’s vessel did not go down like the mighty Titanic and there was no iceberg. His enemies have been plotting their various machinations, setting traps and some sort of Bermuda Triangles of their own to finally vanquish him off ‘their’ party once and for all.
Of course, this was not a myth and they could not just simply remove Butale because they felt like it, the man was democratically elected into the position. With countless court victories against them, Butale’s rival faction had to navigate the water and steady the sea.
The way Butale has been falling and dusting himself off again has been something of a marvel until this week when his seemingly hapless rivals finally figured out how to press the advantage. In today’s unreliable harbours where just about everything can disrupt the ecological balance of politics, Butale’s rival faction knew that this time around a great captain, a working compass, a carefully planned route, and an unrelenting crew, were needed to overcome the sea storm and finally conquer Butale when he least expected.
Until this week when Justice Zein Kebonang of the Gaborone High Court ruled against him in a matter in which he was challenging his expulsion from the party, Butale had been the party’s comeback kid in the many ways he overcame bad publicity and rebounded to victory. His winning streak and the fact that he had been in the catbird seat this entire time, proved to be a major vulnerability this time around as he never saw it coming. He was confident that his vessel was reliable, seaworthy and was sailing without any mishaps in the latest court case.
“Even if I was a box of Chibuku they wouldn’t shake me,” Butale would sometime boast. Before this, Butale’s rival faction now led by the acting BPF president Mephato Reatile, did not know how to take him down.
They illegitimately removed him from his party position numerous times but could not beat him from a courtroom and it is the latter that counts. With one victory after another, it seemed Butale had the nine lives of a cat and the way he rebounded after setbacks gave him firepower, stealth, and overall capabilities of a super-powered submarine.
One moment his ship would seem to have sunk, the next it would emerge and fire anti-ship cruise missiles. Butale, a lawyer by training, knew how to navigate the waters which is the BPF constitution.
The rival faction in the party supported by the party patron, Ian Khama, went for him directly but failed. His ship was the one which needed to be torpedoed and hit underwater. Like software, the BPF had installed Butale constitutionally as the president. But at the moment Reatile and others felt he had turned into malware, which needed to be uprooted right away.
Looking back at the daunting task, which was to remove Butale from the post, his first scare was in 2021 when he was embroiled in a scandalous controversy when a recording emerged that he allegedly sexually abused a young female party colleague. Soon after the allegations of sexual misconduct were levelled against him, he was suspended from the presidency of the BPF. At the time, the Reatile faction did not exist and the Jwaneng/Mabutsane legislator was still at the Botswana Democratic Party. A year after the sex scandal, Butale was pardoned by the party’s Disciplinary Committee (DC) to return as an ordinary member, not as president.
But he could not wait and started claiming to have assumed his presidential duties just a week after he was pardoned. Eventually, he took back his presidency but not without a few bruises as he suffered a huge blow in his tracks to return to the helm of the party. He lost one court battle against then-acting president Caroline Lesang.
Justice Matlhogonolo Phuthego of the Lobatse High Court ruled in favour of Lesang in a case in which she was challenging Butale’s claim to the presidency after his pardon.
Butale was eventually reinstated as the president the same year in late 2022. Fast forward to this year, Butale “made a mere threat in the heat of the moment” that he had resigned from the party in the NEC meeting on March 20. After suspending some members of the NEC, the latter indicated they did not recognise Butale’s suspension because he was no longer president and had resigned. He was forced to rush to the courts to legitimise his presidency. Butale, whose comebacks somewhat embody the mythical nature of the legendary phoenix, was victorious in April when he successfully defended his presidential position.
On June 5 Butale was suspended by the BPF National Executive Committee (NEC) for 90 days. Two days later, he filed an urgent application before the Lobatse High Court in which he sought orders amongst others that his suspension on June 5 be stayed pending the determination of the application. In the end, Butale prevailed when Justice Michael Motlhabi of the Lobatse High Court issued a rule nisi ordering that his suspension letter be stayed pending the determination of the application.
The order also interdicted and restrained vice president, Reatile, or any BPF NEC member from taking any act purporting to implement any resolution made in the NEC meeting said to have been held on June 5. While Butale was still celebrating the temporary victory pending the finality of the court case on June 30, after the BPF’s by-election victory in Serowe West on July 4, he was suspended by the party’s DC and was accused of having caused and encouraged some members of the party to campaign against the BPF and its decisions at the recent Mmaphula East ward by-election in Palapye. He was also accused of having failed to declare funds received on behalf of the party and for allegedly working with party rivals to destabilise the BPF.
Following his suspension, Butale retaliated by recalling his vice president, Reatile, the secretary for information and publicity, Lawrence Ookeditse, and the secretary for health, Dr Kolaatamo Malefho, from their positions in the National Executive Committee (NEC) and suspended them from the party in the “interest of peace and stability". Butale further cited "indiscipline, insubordination, and causing divisions in the party" as reasons to suspend the trio for bringing the party into "disrepute” and "threatening its survival".
Butale’s action infuriated the DC and secretary-general (SG) Tshekedi Khama later announced that the DC had expelled him because he (Butale) had violated the conditions of his suspension. Butale was accused of convening meetings in Palapye and Mahalapye presenting as a member of the BPF NEC and further conducting media interviews wherein he dismissed his suspension. The DC revealed that with a quorum of five members, it met on July 12 and recommended Butale’s expulsion.
The BPF NEC allegedly met and expelled Butale on July 13. On the same day, Butale then wrote a letter to Tshekedi pointing out that the BPF NEC and DC cannot suspend or expel him from the BPF. He indicated that the DC was not properly constituted in terms of the constitution and that members who sat were not appointed by the NEC specifically the author of his suspension letter, Barulaganye Letang. Despite this correspondence to Tshekedi, Butale on July 14 having failed to get control of the party from Reatile and company, decided to approach the court on urgency to return to the helm of the party. While the expulsion matter was still fresh before the Gaborone High Court, the June 5 suspension matter was finally made final by Justice Motlhabi who ordered that Butale’s June 5, 2023 suspension be set aside and that his reinstatement as the legitimate leader of the party had been made a final court order. Justice Motlhabi said the respondents in the case, the BPF SG Tshekedi, Lazarus Lekgoanyana, Ford Moiteela, Prince Bosilong, party patron Khama, Motswasele Kganetso, Malefho, Ookeditse, and Amogelang Mokwena, were in contempt of the court order that Justice Phuthego delivered in April. Justice Motlhabi further gave the respondents seven days from the date of the court order to file affidavits in mitigation. He announced that the sentence concerning their contemptuous conduct will be delivered on August 7.
After the order, the Reatile faction ran to the media to clarify to their members that Justice Motlhabi’s order did not change anything since there was another case before the court, a matter which was decided by Justice Kebonang this week. Reatile told the media last week that Butale was still expelled while the latter told this publication in an interview that he was still president.
Butale has revealed that he is still seeking legal counsel and might appeal the latest judgement but the parties behind Butale’s June suspension still have one hurdle ahead and they all face possible jail time and the matter will be decided this coming Monday. At the moment, the Reatile faction has hit Butale’s ship and it is headed for the seabed. But if he decides to take the matter to the apex court, he might win. The man after all is known for rebounding out of nowhere, much like he possesses the powers of a legendary phoenix.