Nasha wanted to be President
Bame Piet | Friday March 28, 2014 15:46
She recalls one day when she was addressing a political rally in Gaborone North and one man grabbed a microphone and asked her: “Mmaetsho, re bolelele. A gatwe o batla go tsaya setilo mo go Mogae? Bolela! Nasha says she responded in the affirmative and made it clear to him that she had all the qualities of being president.
“I looked at him and thought to myself, obviously, this is just an ordinary citizen who has been drilled by someone to believe that this is a troublesome woman who harbours the unthinkable thoughts and dreams of one day taking God-given power from men. I decided not to be harsh in my response but to be direct with him while getting the message through to those chauvinistic souls out there, who think that positions of power and responsibility are the preserve of the male species,” Nasha wrote. She says the factions that prevailed prior to President Ian Khama’s arrival in the BDP haunted her for years. She accused former president Festus Mogae of failing to control the factions.
“He failed because they were too entrenched. He kept nudging us, the faithful, to stop them. However, President Mogae was too much of a gentleman. He loved peace, and he earnestly yearned to see it flourish some day in his party, but that was not to be.”
Nasha says that Mogae was tired and devised a plan to bring in a disciplinarian from the army – Khama – to come and dismantle the factions in the party. He briefed his cabinet on his intentions, but ministers thought it was an exercise in futility.
“We did not believe for one moment that someone from outside, without thorough knowledge of the party, could come in and repair the damage that had been done over so many years. In the army, a general issues commands, and they are obeyed without question. In a political party, instructions, never mind commands, are open to question, and we wondered how Lieutenant General Ian Khama was going to handle the situation.”
Nasha says she did not take kindly to the fact that Khama would be coming in at the level of vice-president. She felt pity and thought it would be unfair to Dr Ponatshego Kedikilwe, Daniel Kwelagobe and General Mompati Merafhe who had been in the party longer. She says Kedikilwe, the current vice-president is solid in his thinking and honest in his counsel.
“He never allowed his emotions to get the better of him. He was a member of the Kwelagobe faction all right, but up to that point, he had managed to handle it discretely,” Nasha says.
Kedikilwe unexpectly became vice-president after his nemesis, Merafhe retired in July 2012.