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.
