BCP's Ndlovu writes to BDP's new 'Big Fish' Manyapetsa, Osupile hits back
Correspondent | Thursday September 24, 2015 15:55
Yes you are a big catch Lotty Manyapetsa. Those who doubt you have a different (and awkward) understanding of politics. I am yet to meet or hear of anyone in your generation who measures up to your level of SIMPLE politics. Your detractors are generally armchair textbook theorists and the emerging insult blooded type.
Having said that I doubt you are an amphibian politician. Can you survive in both water and land? Fortunately you are giving us the opportunity to see that. My fear is this pressure alone is risky to your health cde. The environment you just left was conducive for your kind of politics but possibly not for a proper lifestyle while the one you are getting into is probably the other way round. But the little I know about you is you are a politician first. The change of lifestyle without change in politics will bore you in two years time, at most. Yes that’s me, fortune-telling (allow me to be a sangoma for a moment); unless they tie you to debts and other vulnerabilities, you will be back in opposition or wilderness before 2019. You see, that’s how far I think I know you, little as it is.
My advice is do not try hard to prove yourself, do the minimum like bo Ntime; fortunately in that environment nothing more is expected from you unless they change just for you. Trying to level with opposition politics will break you, believe you me. There is nothing as difficult as opposing something that you believe in. I know Botsalo has convinced you that it is the same; that his party is a welfarist party but you know welfarism is not exactly the solution to take Botswana forward.
It is a temporary fire fighting mechanism aimed at keeping people at bay while the few deplete what is left of the conscience. You are expected to get there and provide a lagger around the corruption and nepotism that has befallen this nation. You will soon talk the politics of 'the policies are okay, problem is with implementation', that’s hogwash. I know we have some in opposition who chant same song; I hope they don’t believe in it themselves.
Yes you have Ntuane and the likes of Ntime who have an idea of what is needed to counter the opposition but truth is you cant, not with the current Khama led regime and like I said not with Ntuane's welfarism. Very soon you will come face to face with tenderpreneuors masquerading as party activists and that will be it. These ones don’t care about politics; they usually set their eyes in both the ruling and opposition. As soon as it becomes clear the opposition is taking over they will leave you exposed to sharks. Your time in the BDP was the time of bo DK, not now but again, may be, just maybe, you are amphibian.
Thapelo Ndlovu
Dear Thapelo Ndlovu, BCP 2014 elections campaign manager
Of all the people making commentaries (all of which actually attest to his greatness as you have also admitted in your ill-judged analysis) about Lotty Manyapetsa’s defection from the BCP to the BDP, Thapelo Ndlovu should archive his ‘‘sangoma’’ predications to where he has archived the BCP as the 2014 elections national campaign manager. He is the last person to make any sound commentary on Botswana’s political direction because the BCP finds itself in this current mess purely because of him and others who claimed political understanding even when advised they are steering the BCP to its deep end. He led the BCP to the 2014 elections as the campaign manager and was the loudest blindly shouting ‘‘Re a fenya’’ and ‘‘operation 29’’ facebook stunts.
Lotty Manyapetsa has many layers of political brains than yours Thapelo and attempting to analyse Lotty’s political direction and future is akin to trying to stand tall in a deep dark pit. Your field of excellence is possibly somewhere else, probably at BOCONGO. You were the loudest of them all chanting and writing media articles of BCP must remain a 3rd force leading to the 2011 cooperation talks and thereafter, of which I hope you are still preaching.
You advice to Lotty is misplaced and can’t be trusted as much as your operation 29 predictions proved. Concentrate on giving the BCP advices of how to get of the mess you got them into leading to their compromised status after many years of hard work. It took BCP many years of building but it took you 8 months to bring all that down Mr Campaign Manager. It was Lotty Manyapetsa who stood tall immediately after the 2014 elections when the BCP was embarrassed, as many of you interpreted it.
It was Lotty and his friends whom you are now persecuting within the BCP who came out with boldness and stood to defend the integrity of the party in his backyard of Old Naledi during that first BCP rally which set the tone for BCP win’s that followed in both Moshupa and Bokone wards when you had ran away without even giving a report of how the BCP had lost operation 29 campaign. You now resurface to give a political analysis when you still owe BCP members a report of the 2014 elections results?
I vividly remember Lotty Manyapetsa standing up many times to question decisions taken through your leadership as the national campaign manager and I will remind you some of the decisions he questioned which he clearly outlined will lead the BCP down the pit, and you remained unmoved by his advice, they are;
• Your decision to stretch the BCP campaign countrywide with your month bus tour taking the bus even to Ghanzi North where the BCP did not even have a candidate keeping the BCP President away from his constituency leading to his ‘‘we did not see it coming loss’’
• Your failure to realise that Lotty Manyapetsa’s constituency Gaborone South was warming up to the BCP. I mean, Lotty advised you many times to visit Gaborone constituencies and give them a push them but you visited none. You didn’t need a chopper or budget to visit these constituencies as you were defended by that man in that gathering
• Your decision to hold the RE A FENYA rally on the 18th November, the day when public servants were voting, the time when you were supposed to be marshalling your forces to get out the vote for the BCP from the voting public servants, you glued the party at GSS grounds, fantasizing of taking state power, addressing only BCP members, the already converted
• Your negligence of Gaborone Central constituency and failure to advice the President accordingly qualifies you to keep quite in times like this and claim no political wisdom since you are one of the people who blindly smiled all the way RE A FENYA chorus when Lotty Manyapetsa’s friend Gomolemo (MHSRP) met his untimely death, declaring ‘‘no, the party has won Gaborone Central already, re ne re tshaba Gomolemo’’. Lotty advised you as the campaign manager against that mania which led you to send the President on a month rea fenya bus tour thinking it’s all set and done for him in Gaborone Central
Thapelo, I am just pointing out these examples to show you that Lotty Manyapetsa is better positioned to advise you not the other way round.
Your predictions, as you beg to be a sangoma in your writing, are unreliable and remain a figment of your own imaginations Mr Thapelo Ndlovu. Concentrate on getting the BCP out of the mess you plunged them to and let Mr Manyapetsa take his life’s risks and their consequences. He doesn’t serve for himself but for the people, his people, who are fully behind him.
Thato Osupile