The Mahalapye boy with a typewriter
Bame Piet | Thursday October 23, 2014 17:15
Growing up in a rural village where toys, television sets, and a family vehicle were a luxury that could engender envy among neighbours, owning such could catapult one to celebrity status. It was even a huge achievement if such a toy was a typewriter.
When he was growing up in the Xhosa One Ward in Mahalapye, Duma Boko was this boy. He was so brilliant, knowledgeable, and most importantly confident in whatever he set out to do.
To add to that self-assurance was the fact that his father was working at a good paying job at the time – a lecturer at Madiba Brigades. He raised Duma and her sister Emma until his passing in 2004.
The patriarch was the scholarly type, a liberal who did not compare with the conservative traditional parents we had in those days. He read a lot of Marxist books, psychology and others, which he bequeathed on his son, who in turn perused them with consummate passion, said Toteng.
“I met Duma at the Madiba Secondary School debating club, around 1984/85. He was well read and very confident in expressing himself. “His father was well read too and gave Duma access to books. He also spoke English very well and was always self-assured and confident,” said Toteng.
“He was so brilliant and he had no match. One day the students organised a discussion they dubbed Revolutionary Roundtable Discussion.
“But this did not go down well with the school and local authorities and Boko and his schoolmates who were suspended for using the word ‘revolutionary’.
“They were suspended for a couple of weeks, and their parents were called to the school. As you would imagine at that time, some of the parents were more sympathetic to the school authorities, and made it clear that they would call their children to account.
“However, Boko’s father broke the ranks and supported his son, stating that he saw nothing wrong in the use of the word revolutionary.
Toteng recalled how Boko, as a Form Four student almost embarrassed one teacher when he brought over 20 pages of a document in which he had written about Leon Trotsky.
Trotsky, a Russian who was born Lev Davidovich Bronshtein on November 7, 1879 and died in August 1940, was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and theorist, according to Wikipedia. He was the founder and first leader of the Red Army, as the USSR military was called.
Other students became more confident in writing about other communists like Stalin, Lenin and many more.
Trotskyism is the theory of Marxism as advocated by Trotsky who was identified as an orthodox Marxist and Bolshevik-Leninist. He (Trotsky) supported the founding of the vanguard party of the working-class, proletarian internationalism, and a dictatorship of the proletariat based on working-class self-emancipation and mass democracy.
Trotskyites are critical of Marxism-Leninism, as they oppose the idea of Socialism in One Country. In addition to being a sublime debater and brilliant student, Boko had a special possession that made him big among his peers – a typewriter, which made him the envy of his age-mates. “It was our first time to see a typewriter and our ambition was just to touch it. A typewriter. He already had the proficiency to use it. I remember one of my friends who wanted to write a letter to his girlfriend came to beg Duma to type the letter.
“A typewriter, can you imagine? Man, he put a lot of terminology in that letter and the girl felt honoured, and she …” said Toteng.
In the 80s, universities from abroad used to visit the country scouting for talent, and one such University was Makerere in Uganda.
“They were stunned at the brilliance of the young Boko. At the time, the Botswana National Front (BNF) was the in-thing and those who wanted recognition as ‘rebels with a course’ associated with the party then led by Dr Kenneth Koma.”
Apparently, the late Dr Koma, who also originated from Mahalapye, had a great influence in the political life of the two young men (Boko and Toteng) and they could not miss his political rallies, or any of his writings.
“Koma was not only a good orator, he was also a good writer and it was easy to follow his arguments.”
Toteng recalled that as youngsters, embarking on a trip by train from Mahalapye to Gaborone was always intriguing. The sole mission for such trips was to collect books from the Russian Embassy – then the Union of Soviet, Socialist Republics (USSR).
In 1987 Boko relocated to Gaborone for his law studies at University of Botswana (UB). Already a firebrand, he was immediately elected into the UB Student Representative Council (SRC).
Among his law classmates were High Court judges Michael Leburu, Key Dingake, Bengbame Sechele, Lot Moroka, and others who pursued careers outside law practice after school.
After graduating in 1993, he went to further his studies at the prestigious Harvard University in the United States of America (USA) before returning back to teach Law at University of Botswana, simultaneously operating a law firm. Some of the judges incurred the wrath of Boko’s mighty pen in his column in the early 2000s in The Monitor when he accused them of being backward and not intellectually progressive.
Toteng is of the view that then Boko was frustrated that academics at the university, and judges were not doing enough research work to make informed arguments, or judgments.
“They felt denigrated by his attacks. But I think they have since put aside those differences as he now has many friends within the legal fraternity,” said Toteng.
Charismatic
Boko is very good at using his bountiful charisma or charm. He is well known around town as this never-serious character, especially among lawyers, politicians, and journalists.
He has had his fair share of criticism from colleagues in the judiciary, including magistrates and judges for coming late to court proceedings. However, he always finds a way of convincing them not to take punitive measures against him, either by charming them or making a profound apology that is often accompanied by one or two jokes.
During his Monday night debate with Botswana Congress Party (BCP) president Dumelang Saleshando, he continuously threw one or two remarks teasing the latter.
In making a point about job creation, he mocked Saleshando with the phrase ‘Bring back our jobs’ but repeatedly and deliberately pronouncing it as ‘bring back our girls…jobs rhetoric’.
Some callers would later, on Wednesday morning accuse him of making fun of a disaster that befell Nigerian girls who were abducted by Boko Haram terror group.
Still during the Monday debate, when he ran out of water he requested the moderator, “May I have my right to drink water”, to an outburst of laughter in the hall.
“He is a light-hearted person who is never angry at anything. He does not hold grudges. He also does not believe in material wealth, and I can assure you that he is genuine in seeking this office – he just wants to help people,” said Toteng.
Between 2005 and 2006 Boko was part of the legal team representing Basarwa who were challenging their relocation from the Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR).
The judgment that was passed on December 13, 2006, can best be described as a 50/50 outcome for government and Basarwa.
But Boko surprised a packed High Court in a different case in 2007 when he was defending two men who were facing the death penalty.
Michael Molefhe – a South African, and Brandon Sampson – from Gantsi were appearing before Justice Maruping Dibotelo for sentencing after a long trial that attracted the attention of the media.
In what seemed as an effort to delay proceedings, to the chagrin of State prosecutors, Boko tried to make arguments that the court should postpone the sentencing to another date since one of the accused persons was not fit to stand trial. However, he started being melodramatic, sobbing and pleading with the court to spare the lives of the two men who were charged with two counts of murder, and possession of an unlicensed firearm. “You will never understand Duma. He can cry when he has to. He would do anything to get the mercy of a judge,” said a friend whose name cannot be mentioned for legal purposes.
One and only Sibling – Sister
Emma Boko is the only sibling that the presidential candidate has, and she offered to speak to Mmegi yesterday although not very comfortable with the conversation.
The 40-year-old says she grew up with Boko in Mahalapye being raised by their father after their parents divorced.
“We grew up walking to school like any other children. We were raised by our father who made sure that we had food on the table, although he was not doing a high paying job.
“We are a Christian family and he read the Bible to us every morning. He was like a priest to us,” she said.
Emma still remembers how humble their father was, and to her, Duma is the re-incarnation of the man. She recalled that when she was growing up, Duma used to come home late and would lock himself in his room and read books. “Sometimes I used to complain to him that he was not giving me attention. He would also quarrel with our father who was worried that he (Duma) always came home late.
“He also wanted Duma to study political sciences, but he explained to him that he was more interested in studying Law. After the death of our father in 2004, Duma became my father-figure up to this day,” she said.
Their mother is still alive and full of energy. She was at the mammoth launch of her son in Gaborone West where multitudes of UDC supporters and other well-wishers had come from all over the country and beyond.
At this rally, Boko dared the now notorious Directorate of Intelligence Services (DIS) operatives as he told his audience that the agents were easy target for his party followers.
“Ba tshwana le dithokolosi, ha o ba opelela pina baa itebala, kgantele o fitlhela ba tlhakane le lona, ba opela, ba bina. Ke sone se Mokaulengwe a neng a tlhola a opela jaana – ke dithokolosi”
(They are like tokoloshi. When you sing a song for them, they forget their mission, and start yodelling energetically. That’s why Mokaulengwe- the late Gomolemo Motswaledi- loved to sing so much.)
Boko’s ascendancy to the presidency of BNF, and subsequently UDC was not a walk in the park.
First, he inherited a party that was in the decline after going into the 2009 general elections in a tattered state under the leadership of Otsweletse Moupo who has since quit politics to join the civil service.
Due to the poor results, which yielded only five members of Parliament, including losing some constituencies it had held for decades to the ruling party, the BNF wallowed in a challenging period.
Boko’s election in July 2010 at the Mochudi congress, and a confirmation at the Gantsi meet two years later, was followed by a string of conflicts, lawsuits in which some members claimed that he did not possess the BNF membership.
Others tried to hold Boko against his public pronouncement that he has never voted in any general election. The route became even steeper when the BNF came together with the newly formed Botswana Movement for Democracy (BMD), a splinter of the BDP made of disgruntled former members and the Botswana Peoples Party to form the UDC.
Some BNF members who claimed to love the party more than anybody else were strongly against the coalition, arguing that the exercise would make their party disappear from the country’s history books.
A number of lawsuits against Boko and his central committee were laid before the High Court, but none of them deterred him from establishing what is now the UDC. In fact, in the last three months, Boko and the BNF won all the court challenges, something that seemed to revive and reinvigorate the party and its members.
His friend, whose name cannot be revealed, stated recently that the lawsuits, and the heavy criticism from the so-called staunch BNF members made him stronger.
Nothing deviate his dream of a strong opposition that will ultimately unseat the ruling BDP, said the friend.
For the first time in two decades, the ruling party is faced with serious competition from the opposition, including a party led by a boy who was the first among his peers to dance his fingers across the keyboard of his own typewriter.
For the first time opposition candidates are using branded buses to sell their parties to the electorate in all parts of the country. For the first time, the presidential candidates are flying in choppers to meet and greet their potential voters, something that the ruling party has enjoyed unchallenged, albeit using military aircraft at the taxpayer’s expense.