Despite earlier indications that the Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) experiment with automatic succession could go horribly wrong, Mogae will look back with some measure of satisfaction that he somehow managed to steady the ship in very rough storms.
He was the first president in Botswana who came to power through a controversial constitutional enactment that ushered in automatic succession. There were pent-up emotions within the BDP that Mogae was given a free ride to the presidency when other worthy contenders were deliberately locked out through a constitutional manipulation by the then president Sir Ketumile Masire. At the time when Masire was toying around with the idea of automatic succession, there was a feeling, both within the BDP and outside that then party chairman Ponatshego Kedikilwe could have challenged Mogae for the presidency. Because Kedikilwe, his ally and then BDP secretary general Daniel Kwelagobe had command of the party structures, he could have easily won against Mogae. Before he left office, Masire said he was worried about the deep-seated factionalism in the party. He said the divisions needed to be contained before the party is torn asunder.
