UDC needs crowd control mechanisms
Bame Piet | Friday March 4, 2016 13:20
Many events are often spoilt by poor management of the crowds. Take a wedding party, when the host family had anticipated five hundred guests only for 2,000 to show up. They normally leave unhappy, complaining that the hosts were ill prepared and should not have bothered with the ceremony. Others swear that they will never attend such a wedding again.
The recent Son of the Soil is one immediate example of how an event can leave a bad taste in the mouths of many. There were all sorts of complaints.
This is why it is always important for organisers to always engage the services of security companies or protocol people, who will among other things control the movement of crowds, take into custody the rowdy ones, and even recommend the closure of gates to avoid stampedes.
As political parties exchange membership, with the Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) taking some and losing some, the same can be said about the UDC. The arrival of former Speaker of the National Assembly, Margaret Nasha a few months after the controversial and still unclear ‘return’ of founding member advocate Sydney Pilane to the UDC member party, the Botswana Movement for Democracy (BMD), brings a very interesting element in the umbrella. The duo served under former president Festus Mogae, one as a minister, and the other as a special advisor to the President. They are now in the opposition and obviously hoping for extraordinary positions.
On her arrival, Nasha was immediately elevated to special advisor of BMD president Ndaba Gaolathe, and possibly the UDC leadership as a whole, the position she obviously will execute diligently. If finally accepted, former presidential advisor in Pilane may be of value to the brand that is the party and he cannot just be treated like an ordinary member with no special position.
One can argue that if the UDC is ready to forgive Nasha and welcome her into its ranks, despite the decades she spent in the public service and BDP politics, then why not forgive Pilane and welcome him. He was the brains behind the formation of the BMD after all.
Another question should be a bother to the UDC, as a coalition, is how is it going to handle its primary elections, the thorn that destroyed the BDP under the banner Bulela Ditswe. Many people were disadvantaged by Bulela Ditswe and this benefitted opposition parties in several constituencies such as in Tlokweng, Bonnington South, and Molepolole. In fairness to the UDC, primaries are not new to the partners under the umbrella. The Botswana National Front (BNF) never shies away from primary elections, and has been, from way back when the ruling would not dare go the route. In fact, BNF thrives on that inter-party democracy principle, even in the face of threat to shaking an unstable ground. Just two weeks ago, in preparation for this weekend’s Sekoma ward by-election, the BNF held a very risky primary, which the BDP is alleged to be using by recruiting and using the families and supporters of the losing members against the winner, Robert Ransho.
Already with ‘crowd control’ a challenge to the coalition, now comes BCP, a party with a history of once broken umbilical cord to a key member, BNF. The BCP should be a special challenge. Among those challenges are individual members, a burden the UDC has to carry once BCP signs on the dotted line. The likes of former Member of Parliament for Kgatleng East Isaac Mabiletsa, should be an interesting challenge to the UDC member party, BNF, as should be to the member.
Mabiletsa left BNF to establish BCP in 1998. He lost the elections in 1999 and retraced his footsteps to the BNF around 2002. He then won the parliamentary seat under the BNF ticket in 2004, and later in 2009. When Duma Boko was elected the BNF president in Mochudi in 2010, he became the vice president. But two years later, after the collapse of the Umbrella talks, he rejoined the BCP. That was when BNF, BMD and Botswana Peoples Party finally signed in and was formalising the formation of opposition coalition to be later known as UDC. His reasons for leaving the BNF at the time was Boko’ s leadership style.
“The BCP of today is not the BCP of yesterday. When I defected to BCP, it was still new and small and I can tell you that the BCP has grown and is a strong party,” Mabiletsa told a BCP rally in Mochudi to welcome him. However, the results of the 2014 general elections did not reflect his wishes when he lost to Isaac Davids of the BNF/UDC. The counting was characterised by chants and heated exchanges between the supporters of the two Isaacs. The margin was Davids 6,844 Mabiletsa’s 4,528 votes. As the BCP is holding talks with the UDC, it remains to be seen whether Mabiletsa, and those that left with him, will conform to the UDC and its leader Boko’s leadership style. Boko is, after all the UDC president, as he is the BNF leader.
Akanyang Magama - A former Member of Parliament for Gaborone South (2004 to 2009) also defected from the BNF after losing to BDP newcomer Kagiso Molatlhegi. Magama held several positions of power in the BNF, such as the secretary general. After winning a parliamentary seat in the 2004 general elections, Magama was immediately appointed Leader of Opposition, as he was the only senior member of the party to win a parliamentary seat.
Former assistant minister of local government Kentse Rammidi, and former MP for Kanye North who quit the ruling party in late 2011 to join BNF, only to spin again and look for what he must have thought are greener pastures, the BCP, in August 2012, is another player who should not be taken lightly. While they lost to Patrick Ralotsia of the BDP, had Rammidi and Kwenantle Gaseitsiwe of the BNF of UDC not stood against each other in Kanye North, one of them could have been in Parliament. Rammidi came third, but with a not so bad figure of 4,030. Ralotsia won with 5,726 against Gaseitsewe’s 5,654.
Gaseitsiwe is the BNF secretary for international relations, a position that ensures he stays within the realms of power within the UDC politics.
With royal blood and deep roots in the opposition ranks as one of the close relatives of one of the founding fathers and former presidents, the late Kgosi Bathoen II, Gaseitsiwe, the publisher (owns Farmers magazine) cum politician would surely not let go easily if he were to be told to give way for Rammidi.
By all means and purposes, Rammidi is a newbie to opposition politics, despite his high position as BCP secretary general. Incidentally, Gaseitsiwe was among the BNF members to have broken away, albeit temporarily, to form the BCP in 1998. He will feel betrayed if he were not allowed to stand for the Kanye North constituency again. Ever since the 2014 general elections, Rammidi has been agitating for opposition unity even threatening the July 2015 congress that if the party did not consider this option he might have to part ways with it.
In a 2011 open letter following Rammidi’s joining of the BNF, the former youth league president Gabriel Kanjabanga cautioned that the party has a tendency of elevating new members, who defected from other parties, to senior positions even before such members had learned how the party operates.
“The BNF must stop importing leaders and groom its own cadres and pool of leaders. Leaders that are imported divert a political party from its objectives and take it astray on a totally different course, because they would have been given leadership when they did not know what the party they are supposed to lead stands for.”
He continued: “In the BNF, we have this very bad and extremely poor political culture of thinking that when people defect from the BDP or from wherever and join the BNF, they must become leaders and they are better than all other members who over the years have been working tirelessly to build the party”. Could this be happening in the UDC as we speak? The BDP must be watching with keen interest as to how its archrival is going to handle the crowd that is filling up the UDC lounge every minute. Kanjabanga continued to warn that new members must join the BNF political education programme of study group and be taught what the BNF stands for and what is expected of them.
“Only when they have been grilled through the study group and other party activities could we then think about entrusting them with leadership. It is like a church. In Roman Catholic, you cannot become the Pope or Bishop if you join it today. One would be grilled through church teachings and be observed to see whether he/she is loyal and committed to the ideals of the church.
With the next general elections 38 months away, and already on everybody’s lips, the UDC has a huge task of separating opportunists from genuine members who believe in its ideology. The process is called vetting.
Perhaps it is high time the UDC closes gates and allows other aspiring new members to wait in a queue on the other side of the fence. This will not only avoid a stampede, it will also keep out party spoilers.