BCP celebrates bittersweet 15 years

ISAIAH MOREWAGAE
Staff Writer | Friday June 14, 2013 00:00

 

Bill Clinton was in trouble for lying about an affair with a 22-year-old White House intern and empire builders from the West were gearing up for a prosperous and profitable decade. Fifteen years later, workers and the working class have changed the political landscape across the globe and Botswana is no different. The BCP has supplanted its parent, the BNF and is now the biggest single opposition party in the Botswana Parliament in terms of members. After the severe birth pains that produced the BCP from the BNF, the party has had to contend with a hostile political reception.

BCP president, Dumelang Saleshando says the propaganda machine of the BNF and BDP were vicious with accusations that BCP MPs stole BNF seats. 'There was even a parliamentary motion by Gladys Kokowe proposing the discontinuation of floor crossing in Parliament and later, a parliamentary committee addressed Kgotla meetings across the country debating the floor crossing motion,' Saleshando says.

He says despite these challenges, BCP has become the fastest growing party in the country. BCP was formed when BNF imploded following the acrimonious conflicts occasioned by the election of a Central Committee at Ledumang Senior Secondary School in 1997. After the infamous congress, a section of the party calling itself, the 'Concerned Group' together with the then BNF leader the late Dr Kenneth Koma emerged to challenge the outcome of the election. This polarised the party beyond redemption. On the one hand, there was the central committee. On the other, there was Koma and the Concerned Group. Koma issued an ultimatum that BNF parliamentarians should apologise to him or form their own party and it became clear that the BNF would split.'Obviously, there have been questions of whether BNF was of such a nature that Batswana could trust it with governance, which informed the formation of other parties by retired civil servants. BNF was prone to splits thus it was mistrusted mainly by the middle class and by the business community,' Saleshando says.He says that since its birth, BCP has added value to the politics of Botswana by offering a voice for those who do not find a home in both the BDP and the BNF. 'I think it is important that in a multiparty democracy, even-though sometimes they say avoid splitting, it is important that a broad section as possible of the community must be able to identify with a particular organisation,' Saleshando argues.

He says the first two elections, were a major challenge to BCP and it produced only one MP, thus muffling its voice in Parliament.'It brought questions as to whether it was a viable project,' he says.  Saleshando explains that for the party to turn around its fortunes, it had to focus on extra-parliamentary activities. It mounted campaigns outside Parliament like using the Ombudsman to challenge the decision by the BDP to allow then Vice-President Ian Khama to fly military helicopters. In essence, Saleshando says the activities allowed the BCP to demostrate its true worth and value to Botswana politics and many people have therefore decided to follow it. He decries lack of public funding for political parties as a hindrance to the development of democracy. He argues that a strong democracy requires strong political parties and strong political parties require resources.

Saleshando is disappointed by the way in which the opposition cooperation projects are normally undertaken. He avers that the cooperation always has a lot of fanfare. 'And when you fail, you have in effect made the failure look bigger than it was because you over-promised. Parties need to learn that when you get in such exercises, be cautious and that is why companies do a cautionary announcement if they want to merge so that if something happens, they do not have a fanfare of show-boating,' Saleshando advises. He laments that those in the opposition cooperation project do it through public announcements.