I quit - Ntime

EPHRAIM KEORENG
Staff Writer | Monday February 6, 2012 00:00

 

He says the leadership has done everything in its power to disregard BNF processes and procedures in a move to sideline and purge revolutionary and principled cadres.Prior to his resignation, Ntime was on suspension pending a hearing after he made public statements saying the Umbrella talks were doomed to fail and will collapse whilst he was a member of the BNF's negotiation team.

In his resignation letter, Ntime says the BNF has always been a campaigner for the rights of the poor, the marginalised and other sections of the downtrodden in the Botswana society.  'That legacy is no more.The BNF is now a champion of the interests of the leadership and their cronies.  The BNF of today hates debates.To raise a dissenting view is a crime in the BNF under the current leadership.  Structures in the organisation have literally collapsed because the leadership has sidelined hard working cadres and attempted to replace them with their lazy 'yes men and women'.  Dictatorship by the so-called leadership is rampant and one wonders how their dictatorial tendencies would be like if they were to assume state power,' he says.He also charges that the BNF leadership defied the July 2010 Mochudi Congress resolution on opposition cooperation by agreeing on an umbrella model of cooperation.  Ntime says that the 2010 congress resolution stated that the BNF could explore ways of cooperating with other opposition parties for the 2014 general election.  'But the soul of the BNF must not be sold.  Even in 2006, the BNF rejected the Umbrella model because it seeks to annihilate the BNF.  By cancelling the voting symbol of the BNF and forming a new party - as the Umbrella seeks to do - is tantamount to selling the soul of the BNF and annihilating the once mighty people's political movement. 

Note that the congress is the highest structure in the BNF and the conference cannot overturn decisions of the congress.  The conference is lower than the congress, in terms of the BNF constitution.  Therefore, the Tsabong Conference was a frightening violation of the Mochudi congress,' he said.The outspoken political activist says he was born in a BNF family and has not known any political home 'and I have made many sacrifices for the BNF-led struggles, some life-threatening, and it was a painful decision to leave the BNF but the problem is what remains for the BNF is only the name.  The values, ideological construction and philosophy have been abandoned and eroded thanks to the current leadership of oligarchic neo-liberals,' he says.

Contacted for comment,BNF spokesman Moeti Mohwasa said the party has accepted Ntime's resignation,adding that political parties are voluntary organisations.He said by joining them one should know that there will always be a contest of ideas and that it is important that the individual submit to the prevailing view of the majority.'If you do not agree with the views of the majority, as it has happened with him a lot of times, you must then move out. This decision shows he does not agree with the majority view in the party and has seen it fit to go, a decision which we respect,' he said.