Requiem: Othata Koduthebe Otto Motlogelwa as I knew him
| Friday September 19, 2014 16:15
Until about a week ago when I last spoke to this stalwart of the opposition politics of Botswana, I never thought parting company with comrade Othata Koduthebe Otto Motlogelwa was anywhere imminent. Otto was to me, a brother, a friend, a mentor, a comrade, a discussant and a constant source of encouragement when life presented me with uncertainties. But Otto was more than all these as he was also many things as well to many other people in many different situations. Othata was above all else a conscientious worker and an incredible thinker.
He was a practicing Marxist whose life was guided by Marxist principles, amongst which was an unshaking belief in the Marxist utopia where a worker is at once both a producer of goods and commodities as well as a philosopher. It was in furtherance of this unflinching belief that Othata developed himself to be a machinist of the highest order and a thinker who shared his ideals through a column he authored under the pen name Masundakoko. (Pitiki the dung beetle that never fails to surmount any obstacle) Over and above all, Otto knew the value of language as a tool of communication that could either weld communities together or divide them.
To this end Othata learnt and mastered several languages spoken in Botswana. He was fluent not only in Sengwato language, Sengwato culture and history but also its idioms and nuances. He was also fluent in Ikalanga language (hence his pen name) and several varieties of Sesarwa languages. He also had an impeccable command of the English language through which he accessed world history, politics and philosophy.
Othata had not stayed too long at formal school but was certainly an autodidact who, throughout his life, sought and obtained knowledge on his own terms and became an avid reader of very rare texts. It is from him that I got to learn not only the names but also thoughts of world thinkers. The sound of those names to my young mind sounded like poetry.
Incredible names such as Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Friedrich Engels, David Hume, Immanuel Kant, Georg Lukacs, Karl Marx, Baruch Spinoza, Vladimir Illich Lenin, Che Guevara, Ho Chi Min, John Stuart Mill and Sir Isaac Newton whose extensive knowledge of mechanics he prized very highly. He read these thinkers and tried to follow their examples according to that which was applicable to his own life. Othata hated idleness and laziness. And he believed life was to be lived for a purpose.
He also had this firm belief in the purposefulness of life to areas such as politics and society in general. It was such a conviction that made him steadfast throughout the many tribulations and turbulences that befell his party, the Botswana National Front. It was also this steadfastness that allowed him to stand up to and often against Dr. Kenneth Koma, when he felt the elderly statesman was departing from both the theory and practice of revolutionary consciousness. He understood more than many the cunningness of the erudite doctor who always insisted on research and he took his political assignments seriously.
Otto understood most succinctly the power of both colonialism and imperialism as well as their continued stranglehold in the emerging economies of Africa. He continued to read in this area and it was in this regard that he recently alerted me to the existence of a book I was not aware of, The Confessions of the Economic Hitman, a book that dedicates only a few lines to Botswana that speaks volumes of where we stand in the economic order of the world.
Othata believed like Fredric Jameson in the simple motto that ‘always historicise’. He valued more than anybody else Lenin teachings on both, ‘What is to be done’ and the importance of ‘The national Question’. Othata embraced whole heartedly the teachings of Frantz Fanon on the theme of African liberation, believing as he did in the final resolution of the class struggle that would ultimately render the last as the first, while the first became the last.
Otto had a special axe to grind against both the system, that is, the BDP administration of the country and Sir Seretse Khama’s personal style of rule, which he described in two words, ‘pomp and ceremony’. He had been better placed to know, for he was amongst the first cadres of the Botswana Youth Federation who read world theory of revolution and were prepared to make Botswana a socialist republic. Othata was according to M. Ramaloko, a secretary general of the BYF for a lengthy term.
It was this structure, Prof. Karlmon Mogalakwe of the University of Botswana attests, that was later to metamorphose into the Botswana National Front youth league. And again Othata served in its commanding structure too, at one time serving in its Control Commissioner. These youth leaguers of their day brought dynamism to the BNF as most of its members ascended to positions of influence in the mother body. They were probably the first but not the last consistently politically educated cadres of the Botswana National Front. But mostly because they were consistent with their political believes as they carried on the true tradition of the BNF, and educated the subsequent generations of the youth leagues.
The power and influence of this particular group of youths was so serious and immense that when in 1975 their members received an invitation to participate in a youth festival in Cuba, the government of Sir Seretse Khama panicked as it believed the youths were being sent abroad to undertake military training with a view to come back and destabilise the government of the ruling BDP. The president of the day then ordered a seizure of the passports of all the youths who were earmarked to leave for Cuba. Othata Motlogelwa was among these and he would then never forget nor forgive the government for this arbitrary behaviour.
Otto, as we popularly called him, played all sorts of roles, and I dare say, he played all those roles very diligently, it were as if he had had nothing else to do. Othata was a giant in more than one respect; he was the most military looking man I have known, one whose very step exuded the confidence and sure footedness typical only of the most highly trained cadres of Africa’s liberation forces but happily a man who never wielded any weapon of war.
In fact Otto was such a fearless giant that abhorred any use of violence. Though his age mates tell me that in his younger days he had been rush and quick tempered. Ramaloko tells a story of how at one BNF conference held in Tlokweng many years ago he led a group of youths in the assault of a secret police agent who had stayed behind when after the official opening the public had been asked to leave as the conference entered a closed door session.
The man was finally saved by the timely intervention of then vice president of the BNF Kgosi Bathoen Gaseitsewe who the youths held in absolute awe. This then is the story of the life of one Othata Koduthebe Otto Motlogelwa of Pilikwe and Goo Konyana ward in Serowe. And this really is as much Othata’s story as it is my own. Let me then go back to history, where all good biographies begin.
I came to Moeding College on around 11 or 12 January of 1972 to a situation that Joseph Kafka would have described as macabre, a situation very much like Kafka’s own ‘penal colony’ where those condemned to languish for crimes against the state were committed. We were a large body of newcomers, or Mesela as we were fondly called, coming into Secondary education for the very first time. Most of us were in the age range of 11 to 12 years old having started primary in 1966. But in spite of our small age and tiny stature we were subjected to physical assault, to slamming, and every kind of abuse by all the form two to five’s. It was open season for brutality where newcomers were beaten, their provisions of baked bread and fried Mohago chicken confiscated, forced to dance or forced to sing “Ke lelea jaaka piano’.
The more isolated colleges like Moeding College and Moeng Colleges were absolute horror as the school authorities seemed impotent as they just stood there and watched how new comers were ‘treated’ to be broken in. Otto was already doing Form five then if my mind serves me well. At that time he looked incredibly tall, confident and severe and fearsome to the extent that everyone wanted him to be his own protector from marauding hordes of form twos or threes. And then we learnt that among us was Otto’s young brother Samuel Motlogelwa who would in his own turn become a feared presence amongst our group.
But apart from the severe looks, that earned Otto a nickname Mompe from his colleagues (other form fives) Otto proved to be a disarmingly gentle giant who was more interested in what we were thinking rather than beating us up. So then, when security of tenure returned to us at the college, we learnt to mimic the senior boys when we were out of earshot to pronounce the nicknames ‘Mompe’ in awed reference to our political Godfather while ‘Mompswana’ was not such a big deal because after all we were engaging in the same towel warfare with Samuel. However we were ever so very careful to call Otto ‘Mompe’ because it was always clear that he was not the one to suffer fools gladly.
Otto was a strapping bloke whose very eyes radiated the dare devilry and determination to do as well as a natural authority to lead, but a giant who also respected what we the small form ones felt and thought; he would engage us in friendly banter on what we wanted to do once we finished school. He normally would have one or the other of Dr Kenneth Koma’s many pamphlets at hand. Pamphlet No 1, and Education in Black Africa were his favourites as were Lenin’s “What is to be Done?” and ‘The National Question’, both small pamphlets the senior boys of our day collected from the Embassy of the USSR in Gaborone.
He read these and internalised their contents. So it was that whenever the movement, as the BNF was at times called, would seem to flounder as it often did, Otto would stand up among the multitudes to articulate this one million pula question that would be doing rounds in many minds, “What is to be done?” This however remains a germane question begging for an answer, even after his passing on, that those of his comrades still surviving must answer very quickly as the political fortunes of the land have become more and more fickle.
KEINEETSE KEINEETSE