Moupo's foibles personify destiny of opposition

RAMPHOLO MOLEFHE | Friday February 29, 2008 00:00

 

He prevailed over his opposition mainly the very cohort of 'so-called' leftists who gave his the presidency after defeating Kenneth Koma at the famous Kanye, one proper congress, ago.

He also, by some trick of default, determined that he would keep the presidency till 2010, after leading, by yet another twist of fate, the BNF through the 2009 general election.

Only Kenneth Koma, the founder of the BNF together with that venerated generation of OK Menyatso, Conference Lekoma and Klass Motshidisi, could have managed that monumentous, feat, mainly because history permitted, and not by default.

Koma had theorized that he and the BNF would make the biggest impact, and gain a qualitative advantage over its adversaries at the Botswana Democratic Party, if he defeated them where they were strongest, at least subjectively.

Gaborone was the seat of parliament, commerce, government administration and the hub of intellectual enterprise in the country.

But, the objective fact of the development of a more cogent working class, steady deterioration of the living standards of the proletariat and incessant alienation of labour from the land and commercial opportunity, became the very Achilles heal of the theretofore impregnable political fort that was the BDP under Seretse Khama.

By deliberate and conscious purpose, Koma, suffering defeat after defeat, stood for Gaborone where Domkrag rule created the most discontented and the most conscious of the electorate that would eventually turn against it.

In 1984, the right combination of objective and subjective factors combined to permit Koma and five others in the opposition to win parliamentary seats, albeit after yet another protracted struggle, in which he had to appeal to the High Court to retrieve the Tshiamo Ballot box that went missing the first time around.

Around Kenneth Koma, developed something of a unifying notion that the least privileged had a chance to have their voice heard in parliament.

Together came disgruntled elements of the BDP - leaders where they came from - Leach Tlhomelang having been youth leader and Wellie Seboni, assistant Minister of Finance after serving several terms as mayor of Gaborone. 

The permanent secretaries buzzed around the queen bee, realising that the BNF represented yet another opportunity for them to gain access to the beehive at Parliament.

Much of the youth that had campaigned not just to take  KOMA and a few others to parliament, but also to create the very BNF brand, retreated into the background, only to resurface 20 years later to manage the political undoing of Koma.

In Moupo, this group saw the makings of a re-branding of the BNF, and perhaps, a return to the core ideals that popularized the BNF in Gaborone, Ngwaketse, spreading out at the zenith of its upward swing to Kgatkeng, Okavango, Selibe Phikwe, Jwaneng and Francistown where the Botswana Peoples Party had been more popular.

It took two years for Moupo to expose himself as the ultimate personification of the steady dismemberment of the Botswana National Front.

He handled money the same way that the organisations had always done. Nobody knows where the money to build Kopano went, in the same way as nobody really knows what happened to the money Moupo received on behalf of the parties that wanted unity. The one thing that is certain is that the very BNF which was historically the initiator of the unity ideology and movement, has now been marginalised from both.

Moupo shed his political friends - the kingmakers who convinced the Kanye congress that he could deliver what Koma had failed to do - in the same manner that Koma had shed the revolutionary youth, and with it, the proletarian aspirations of the working classes of Selebi and Phikwe, Gaborone, Jwaneng, Lobatse and Francistown.

Even GaNgwaketse, and Kgatleng where Kgosis Bathoen and Linccwe had made the ground softer for the BNF, it has started to flounder, relying only on a tenacious following persuaded more by tradition than by inspirational leadership.

In fact they might vote BNF, with or without Moupo and his central committee, if they still care that it exists!

And so, since the transformation of the BNF into a truly parliamentary operation that provides a livelihood for the small elite that alternates seats in parliament and the councils, it has steadily lost its attractiveness to the working class, the unemployed, the poor, the small rural farmers, the students and teachers who sought unity under it.

Even as it was never able to effect coalescence to these groups as entities in their own right - which is theoretically what the function of a 'front' is - it nevertheless, in broad cultural terms represented a rallying point where members of these constituencies could find a space and a voice.

So, as it always happens when the gang makes the final escape after a successful hoist, each takes his share and bites the wind. The purpose of the gang has expired, what remains is for each to fend for himself wherever he shall be with his share of the loot, as long as the long arm of the law stays in abeyance.

Doesn't then, the defeat of Moupo in Gaborone West North sound the final bell on the marriage of inconvenience among the individuals and 'tendencies' that found cover under the BNF, at least when Koma and the original founders were still ticking.

It sounds deafeningly close to that.

* The leader of the BNF has crafted a most ingenious plan to extend his longevity by manipulation of the constitution of the organization, seemingly without doing much that could be considered illegal. Only leaders in trouble are capable of that kind of trick.

* The BNF, if Moupo does not secure another 'safe seat', will regress to its pre-1984 position where it will be represented by other than its leader in parliament, if it manages a few seats there this time around.

* Uniquely, the party will go to the general election in 2009, behind a leader who having failed the single most important internal examination in a party that has turned to parliamentarism as a mode of struggle, away from its more revolutionary deportment of earlier times.

* The BNF is beginning to lose its own sitting parliamentarians and councillors. Moumakwa leaves of his own volition. Mogalakwe  was pushed.

These incidents represents only the culmination of the historical process of dismemberment instigated by Koma, shedding first several of the veteran ideologues of the party many of them going to form different political parties because they were decided against Domkrag.

Dennis Mosielele, G.K Gare, Stephen Sorinyane and more left as individuals. Then the exodus took the form of organizational groupings: Shaun Ntlhaile's Socialist Party, Mareledi Giddie's PUSO, Lenyeletse Koma's organisation, Kenneth's own National Democratic Front and the Botswana Congress Party, which imagines itself as the heir to the BNF.

All of them appear destined for the same fate as the BNF; a tired opposition bereft of singular political purpose and motivated only by the primal urge to permit a few of the elite in the leadership to enjoy parliamentary opposition to Domkrag.

And as all of them recede into inconsequential oblivion, the ruling Botswana Democratic Party will be waiting agape, to swallow the surviving human fallout that will assist it to stand where it is.

As we speak, rumour abounds, that former stalwarts of the BNF will be appointed to Ian Khama's cabinet.