allAfrica.com: Botswana: Moupo's Foibles Personify Destiny of Opposition (Page 1 of 2)

Not even Otsweletse Moupo could have calculated that the 2007 May Botswana National Front special congress that he called to overcome resistance to his continues leadership of the party carried the implications - if he won - of guaranteeing him presidency until 2010.

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.

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