To Same Bathobakae; �the call of death is a call of love��
Dithapelo Keorapetse | Friday December 2, 2016 15:49
While William Shakespeare observed that “all that live must die, passing through nature to eternity”, no one could have been prepared for the untimely passing of Mma Bathobakae.
I can only imagine what her family, friends and comrades are going through. I extend my deepest sympathies to them. Personally I am honored and blessed to have known and worked with her in Parliament and opposition politics. She was truly a blessing and we will miss her. We part with her in pain and may the God Almighty give her eternal rest.
Like the US poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow said “when a great man dies, for years the light he leaves behind him, lies on the paths of men”, Kwankwetla, as she was affectionately known by her comrades, has left a huge impact on contemporary Botswana politics. For decades, she dedicated and committed her life to the struggle for democratic and social-economic development of Botswana.
She chose the most difficult life of opposition politics not for the fun of it but because she believed that Botswana can and must be better.
Mma Bathobakae has for many years sacrificed her family time, narrow focus on herself and or amassing of wealth for the community of Tlokweng, her Botswana National Front (BNF) and later Umbrella for Democratic Change (UDC) and Batswana in general. It is not easy to be in opposition politics in Botswana; there is no public funding of political parties, the big business elites have aligned with the ruling party so as to access state resources and politicians like Mma Bathobakae had to fend for themselves to get to council and Parliament.
Women in Botswana like elsewhere have endured a lot of degradation, traditionally, politically and economically.
While they make up nearly half of the country’s population, their involvement in formal political structures and processes, where critical decisions on the distribution of national resources generated by both men and women remains trivial. Political parties have for many years not looked favorably upon female candidates.
Men constitute a larger percentage of the party leadership and this tends to affect women when it comes to electing candidates for elections.
Men remain very influential in intra-party politics because they dominate the party’s hierarchy and are at an advantage. Women are faced with these problems notwithstanding the well-defined obligation of the international community to gender equality and to the bridging of the gender gap in politics, reiterated by the Convention on Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and the Beijing Platform of Action.
Notwithstanding all the aforementioned challenges faced by women in national and party politics, Mma Bathobake rose through the ranks of the BNF until she became second in command in the politburo. She became the BNF Vice President at the time when the party was faced with internal challenges and was preparing for the 2014 general elections.
She won the 2014 elections to become the sole woman opposition party MP and the second ever to have been so elected. She was a role model to many women politicians and served as a living example that regardless of limited financial resources, family responsibilities and childbearing and rearing and or other maternal commitments and challenges, women can become whatever they want to be. She never allowed these challenges to encumber her involvement in partisan and national politics.
She abhorred all forms of discrimination against women. Most gains Botswana has on women participation in party and national politics today can be credited to committed women like Mma Bathobakae.
She is truly a heroine. Her life is therefore placed in the memory of many aspiring women politicians, as Marcus Tulius Cicero would put it. Kwankwetla supported the signing and ratification of SADC Protocol on Gender and Development as a tool towards achieving the regional and national development goals on gender equality. Mma Bathobakae never stopped believing that unemployment, poverty, wealth and income disparities, lack of access to services and women disempowerment can end. She always believed that there is an alternative to the status quo. These are the ideals she cherished so much. In Parliament she mostly talked about issues affecting the Batlokwa.
The most memorable being the land question. Tlokweng is in close proximity with the capital city and has been a victim of the sprints and marathons towards land ownership.
A significant number of the village residents is from outside Tlokweng, putting pressure on this scarce resource. She has perpetually spoken about this issue sensitising all and sundry about the plight of Batlokwa.
Imperturbable, collected, humble and a pleasing personality, Mma Bathobakae was a unique figure. Even when it got so heated up in Parliament, she seldom raised her voice or threw tantrums, she chose her words carefully and retorted calmly.
She was an MP who was more concerned about saying what she needed to say on a given issue rather than exhausting the time allocated to her. While she observed the rules of order and procedure, she was a no push over, she was firm and fair.
The House, the opposition caucus and opposition politics will never be the same without her. It is difficult to adhere to the German novelist and poet Hermann Hesse aphorism that “the call of death is a call of love. Death can be sweet if we answer it in the affirmative, if we accept it as one of the great eternal forms of life and transformation”. May your soul rest in eternal peace.