“The constituents simply implored me to be their secretary at Palamaokuwe ward. There was mistrust between the people and their then councillor whom they associated with the then emerging Botswana Movement for Democracy (BMD),” recalls Kedikilwe. At one of the party meetings, constituents duly made a decision to rope him as their ward candidate in the impending General Election. Their position was that, they have found a “councillor in me.” Initially, the businessman-cum-politician had eschewed the offer as he was not ready to be active in politics yet, since he had his businesses to run. Those who had earmarked Kedikilwe as their candidate, would then trail his wife and other party elders to convince him to take up the assignment and they did the rest of the spade work for him. One of the days, a party elder in the ward, Osi Lesetedi, buttressed the message of the people for Kedikilwe to carry their assignment with promises that they would conduct house- to-house campaigns for him and hand over victory on a silver platter at the polls. “I was reluctant to stand. They informed me that they had already done the spade work. “This was in 2008 and in the elections year 2009, I was the party council candidate at Palamaokuwe and the people’s promise came to pass.
” He had agreed to contest on the understanding that, “If I lose, I would disappear into thin air.” After two five-year terms as Palamaokuwe councillor, Kedikilwe resolved to step down and focus on his businesses that needed his unwavering support. Besides, his butchery businesses, he is into horticulture and also rears cattle. It was in 2020 that he was forced to accept appointment as a civil servant in a political office manned by his then area Member of Parliament (MP), Tshekedi Khama as a senior administrative secretary. “Unexpectedly, I received a call from MP Tshekedi proposing that I serve in his parliamentary office and I obliged,” explained Kedikilwe. His journey to Parliament started in earnest only in 2023 when Tshekedi’s term had to be terminated. The termination came after his former boss had crossed the border into South Africa and Parliament dominated by the then ruling Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) opted to end his tenure as an MP after he had absented himself from Parliament for two consecutive parliamentary sessions. Kedikilwe, however, still remembers that the BDP-dominated Parliament punished Tshekedi when “they had documentation that spoke to his state of health at the time. The information was shared with Parliament and they still went ahead and chucked out Tshekedi.” “You know, I had submitted documentation that supported Tshekedi’s continued absenteeism from parliamentary work,” he elicited.
