BNFYL endorses UDC membership card
Tsaone Basimanebotlhe | Wednesday September 14, 2016 15:55
The recent announcement of the implementation of the individual membership card divided the members, many of whom went on social media expressing their views. Some opponents of the card, especially members of the Botswana National Front (BNF), went to the extent of blaming their leaders for having failed to consult on the issue.
The BNFYL is the first structure to officially endorse the move.
“In light of the above, we spoke to need of audited databases that include membership that include membership or any other relevant information.
“We are of the solemn view that the card serves to push the issue of political marketing and will help in proper management and record keeping,” BNFYL president Khumoekae Richard said yesterday during a press conference.
He continued: “The card is contemporary and appealing. For that we give it green light. It will be an act of topnotch hypocrisy to reject something that essentially addresses the issue that we have always spoken about, political marketing”.
Richard said contrary to opposing views, there was consultation whether it was adequate or not.
He said in 2013 at BNF congress, his party resolved to give the UDC constitution a green light and in accepting the founding document of the Umbrella, it was legitimising everything that defines a political party.
Richard said the UDC constitution and that of any party provides for membership cards.
“Article 6.1.1 stipulates that membership of the Umbrella shall be open to any citizen of Botswana in the age of 16 and above, and article 7 allows for direct membership by individuals.
“Therefore by BNF members giving the UDC constitution a green light, they were agreeing to everything including these articles at the congress,” he said.
He said the UDC secretary general Ndaba Gaolathe wrote a letter after UDC meeting that was chaired by Duma Boko and all parties then were all represented, to communicate the decision.
While insisting that the issue dates back to 2014, Richard however noted that the problem lies with lack of constant and requisite communication at individual party level.
“The previous leadership is to blame on this account. BNF did not do enough to keep the masses abreast, (and) updated to make them understand,” he said.
He also took swipe on party members who attack party leadership on social media.
“Opportunistically and conveniently and with some sprinkles of a factionalist tendency, there seem to be too much excitement that borders on indiscipline and arrogance. Perhaps we should remind cadres of revolutionary discipline,” he said. When briefing members about the intentions of the UDC individual membership card, at a BNF conference in Goodhope in 2015, party president Duma Boko stated that it was not UDC membership, but indiscipline of some of their members that discourages people joining the party.
Boko said it is their open defiance of party resolutions that casts the party in the most negative light and makes it unattractive to new as well as old members.
“These frail and futile propositions are being pursued, in the main by those who lay claim to some ideological purity, those who claim the label of Marxist-Leninist.
“For these ideological gladiators a direct route of membership into the UDC heralds the death of the BNF,” Boko told members at Goodhope.