BOSETU fails to locate BCP for invitation

Bonte Seepi | Wednesday August 26, 2015 15:27

The Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) was represented by its labour officer, Kgang Kgang, while the Umbrella for Democratic Change was represented by its vice president, Ndaba Gaolathe.

In an interview with Mmegi after the conference, BCP publicity secretary, Dithapelo Keorapetse, revealed that they did not snub BOSETU, as they were not invited to the conference. He said that they did not receive any letter from the union formalising their invitation. “I can confirm that we were not invited to the conference and that is why we did not turn up like other parties,” he said. “If we had  received an invitation, we would have surely shown up or sent one of our members based in Palapye.”

Quizzed about their reasons for not inviting the BCP to their conference BOSETU secretary general, Tobokani Rari, said that they did not invite the BCP to their conference because the party was nowhere to be found as their offices at Gaborone (African Mall) were being renovated.

He said that they have been looking for the BCP offices since last June when they started to deliver invitation letters to organisations but could not locate them.

Rari said: “We made an attempt to deliver the invitation to the BCP but we found their offices locked. It was clear that they were being renovated but they did not leave any message to their neighbours or inform people in writing where they had moved to. As BOSETU we only invite people to our events through letters, so we could not go around calling each and every member of BCP on their mobile phones inviting them to the conference.”

He emphasised that the party could have left a message as to where they can be found. He said they even called some of the party members to enquire where their office had moved to but they also seemed to be clueless.  He added: “We even tried to call some of the party members, to be precise secretary general Kentse Rammidi, enquiring about the whereabouts of their office but he also did not know where the office had moved to. His contacts were the only ones we had, that is why we called him. We even tried to call their office line but could not reach anyone.”

He said BOSETU had wished to have BCP at the conference just like other parties but failed to reach them because of that particular problem.