Last year, our Parliament, dominated by conservative Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) rightly adopted a motion by BCP's Okavango MP, Bagalatia Arone, calling for the political party funding by the state. For many years the BDP has been resistant to funding of political parties by the taxpayer. We are still awaiting the implementation of this law. While we should be hopeful that we could reach October with the law in place, reality and history is not so generous. Kgathis's party picks and chooses the urgency in speed in which it implements parliamentary motions.
There is reason for this disinterest. BDP has not been short of funding, at least not at the same level as opposition parties. It has enjoyed greasing of hands from multi national corporations, notably, De Beers. Yes, De beers; the company that co-runs the economy of Botswana. The company continues to enjoy exclusive and domineering arrangement in the mining industry in this country. This is the company that is yet to refute allegations of some slush fund, whose benefactors include, possibly among others, the former president, Sir Ketumile Masire.
