BDP: The ‘sick man of southern Africa’
Ryder Gabathuse - PAULINE ROD SMITH | Monday July 28, 2025 11:20
BDP members led by the party president. PIC KENNEDY RAMOKONE
Masisi’s comfortable sitting on the laurels of his imaginary control did not help the situation in his dreamland of utopia he affectionately called “Tlebebe”. Little did it occur to him and the entire party leadership that they were plotting his political self-destruction.
To many suffering masses, Tlebebe represented a blessed land of opulence, a land of plenty and more than enough.
The open declaration of the existence of the island of Tlebebe, the land of milk and honey, which many Batswana could only dream of and never reach, no matter how hard they laboured and toiled, must have been a turning point in the history of the BDP.
With the benefit of hindsight, it was the worst political blunder Masisi ever committed. It was not a reflection of modesty and humility but a public demonstration of pomposity of the highest degree.
At the time, many people’s lives had taken a nosedive following the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, which was also accentuated by the deepening of the ‘tentacles of corruption’ under Masisi’s watch. The public disaffection with the regime was also exacerbated by a series of unkept promises. The Masisi regime was dismissed as a ‘talk-talk’ one with no meaningful actions taken to realise the electoral promises of 2019. This prepared a fertile ground for a revolt against the BDP hegemony, and it seemed Masisi did not see it coming.
A series of political blunders were committed at Tlebebe. What was perhaps even more vexing was a deafening political silence from the BDP apparatchiks, including from his lieutenant and right-hand man, vice president Slumber Tsogwane and the elders such as former Cabinet ministers David Magang, Ponatshego Kedikilwe, Daniel Kwelagobe and former president Festus Mogae, amongst others.
The duty of a state vice president and the party chairperson is to advise while being a restraining influence on their political principal.
Tsogwane, however, failed dismally to discharge his functions, preferring to rubber-stamp whatever decisions his boss made, unsound they may have been. And so, the show went on. They cheered their leadership on, some observing benevolent neutrality when Masisi was tearing apart the party they professed to love dearly. Even when party diehards saw that their party was slightly off rail, they chose to cheer their leaders instead of holding them accountable when it was critical to do so.
None objected even where there were clear and flagrant violations of intra-party democracy, as in the case of Edwin Dikoloti, who was undemocratically and forcefully dislodged from his bid to represent the BDP in the Goodhope–Mmathethe constituency at the October 2024 polls.
Dikoloti‘s crime was to dare contest the primary elections against Masisi’s preferred candidate, Peggy Serame, who was serving as Finance Minister. Dikoloti had done himself a favour by comfortably winning the primary elections under the slogan ‘Wena Beulah’.
The central committee, at the behest of Masisi, overturned the will of the people and imposed Serame as the BDP candidate to the poor woman’s disgrace. The people on the ground, including the elderly, shed tears of sorrow, and their tears were not enough to move BDP head honchos in their rigid position to anoint Serame against all odds.
It was business as usual; the BDP had mastered and perfected the principle of follow the leader - sheepish worship of its supreme leader, and none was ready to raise a finger.
A few constituencies went to the 2024 polls literally under a protest.
Palapye constituency was shocked when the party leadership chose to silence the constituents by anointing Kungo Mabogo, thereby forcing the rest of other contestants to fall off, leaving the constituency in a state of shock and disconnection.
It was pathetic watching Mabogo chasing shadows in her endeavour to win the hearts and minds of the constituents who resisted her.
Things could not add up as people chose to abandon their party en masse by simply staying away from the party activities, leaving Mabogo heavy-laden with the task of rallying for support.
In Maun East, aspirants Reaboka Mbulawa, Konstantinos Markus and Chris Bethia were never given a chance to try their luck in battling it out for the party ticket in the constituency as the party had its own Oateng Sethodi, who could not make any impact as the constituency, simplifying the task for the Botswana Congress Party (BCP), which sailed easily through the evergreen Goretetse Kekgonegile.
Another humongous blunder created by the Masisi administration was when the BDP chose to self-barricade from GammaNgwato territory after falling out with his mentor Ian Khama. Although the BDP on a number of occasions claimed it was working its way back into Serowe constituencies and the wider GammaNgwato, its comeback strategies were not impressive at all. They simply lacked tact.
The failure to return to Serowe had far-reaching consequences in the end as it also had an impact on the neighbouring constituencies loyal to Serowe, such as Boteti East and West, Mahalapye East and West, Palapye, Tswapong East and West, Mmadinare and Shoshong, which had become loyal opposition (UDC) backyard then. Now in power, the UDC government ensured the BDP was diametrically removed out of GammaNgwato leaving it with only four seats in Partliament.
On a number of occasions, former party secretary-general Kavis Kario dismissed reports that the BDP had given up on reclaiming its former stronghold from the opposition Botswana Patriotic Front (BPF), which has taken over the firm control of Serowe’s three constituencies of South, North and West. He was joined by the then party spokesperson Kagelelo Kentse, who incessantly painted a picture of hope even when it was evident that the party was not doing anything convincing to reclaim the vast GammaNgwato territory. The area was for many years the BDP’s unshakeable stronghold from independence in 1966 to 2019, when Khama joined hands with other aggrieved BDP operatives to form the party’s second breakaway party, BPF, after the Botswana Movement for Democracy (BMD), which was birthed in 2010. In essence, the entire BDP leadership under the tutelage of Masisi chose to fall on their swords rather than coming up with a powerful turnaround strategy that could have improved the party’s fortunes.
Under Masisi, a culture of bolope, or boot licking and sycophancy, was promoted and cherished. With hindsight, the people chose to punish Masisi and his party for ignoring the will of the people. In his early political life, Masisi left the country in incessant laughter when he thundered: “Ke lelope, ke ngwana wa lelope (I am a bootlicker. I am the son of a bootlicker.)” This must have struck the right chord with Khama, who entertained bootlicking, especially with his military background, where bootlicking is reportedly commonplace. There was even a time when a former legislator, Liakat Kablay likened Khama to the Messiah, Jesus Christ, just as a matter of obsequiousness. Under the circumstances where the BDP was visibly unable to self-preserve and self-critique, Batswana with hindsight benefits must have declared the BDP ‘the sick man of southern Africa’. Masisi championed bolope under Khama, which he catapulted into the presidency, finally caught with him and led the BDP to its abyss. The country needed to be saved from its arrogance and misrule. And indeed, the will of the people prevailed in October 2024. Meanwhile, it is depressing that the exhilaration that characterised the UDC takeover of the seat of power last October (after nearly six decades of BDP’s continuous rule) has left the coalition government at sixes and sevens in its endeavours to turn around Botswana’s beleaguered economy inherited from the past regime led by Masisi.