Reverend Biggie Butale’s fate will be all but sealed when he appears before a Botswana Patriotic Front that was “hastily” cobbled together following public revelations of his hanky-panky with a youthful party member. That Committee reports to a 22-member Central Committee in which only eight members sympathise with the former assistant minister and Tati West MP.
Butale finds himself in hot water after ill-advised hanky-panky with a Botswana University of Agriculture and Natural Resources (BUAN) student. Audio recordings of a telephone conversation that the student secretly made have painted the BPF president into a corner because he explicitly confesses that something that he expected the young woman to enjoy did indeed happen. “Did you come?” he asks her in the most explosive audio clip. Circumstances in which Butale came to put the student (whom he calls Wangu in the audio) in a position where she should have enjoyed whatever it is he was serving her is now the subject of an internal BPF investigation. While she never actually uses the word, what the student describes meets the legal definition of rape. To her assertions that “you pinned me against the wall” (and ostensibly had his way with her), Butale counters with a dumb-founded “You know what happened.”
A party that was hastily cobbled together ahead of the 2019 general election didn’t anticipate that its president would ever have to be expelled or suspended. The result was that the party’s constitution doesn’t have provisions that make such actions possible. That loophole has enabled Butale to ignore a Central Committee recommendation that he should step aside for a month while it considers his case. A fortnight ago, he addressed the Gaborone South branch committee.
The nature of a disciplinary hearing is such that both parties (being the complainant and the respondent) get to appear before the Disciplinary Committee and each party gives their side of the story. More salacious detail will be revealed at this hearing but already there are problematic issues about whether the seven-member Committee can discharge its responsibilities in a dispassionate and fair manner.
The first is that while the BPF has always had plans to form a disciplinary committee, the issue has never been agreed upon at successive Central Committee meetings. That there was no pressing issue that needed the attention of such committee may also have influenced the slow pace at which the issue progressed. When one such issue cropped up (Butale’s indiscretions), the formation of the committee gained urgency, especially that no other party process or body could be pressed into service to resolve the misconduct in question. To conspiracy theorists who believe that the whole Wangu saga was a honey trap purposefully set up to ensnare Butale, the hasty manner in which the committee was put together would seem to confirm such theory.
Membership of the Committee could also be an issue and here two names are mentioned: Foster Seretse and Emmanuel Orateng. Seretse, who is the younger brother to former cabinet minister and Serowe North MP, Ramadeluka Seretse, and cousin to Serowe West MP, Tshekedi Khama. Orateng was Khama’s campaign manager during the 2019 general election.
There is a theory about a plot to replace Butale with Khama. The theory may not be true but the fact that it has been put out there complicates matters for the party. Butale may himself not believe such theory but can conveniently use it to bolster his case. In that context, Seretse and Orateng’s membership of the Disciplinary Committee constitute clear conflict of interest because they are too closely aligned with a man (Tshekedi) who reportedly wants to topple Butale. One party member describes Seretse as a “fair-minded person” but point-scoring would trump such consideration.
The alleged plot to topple Butale is interesting in another dimension. BPF, which was founded by former president and Bangwato kgosi, Ian Khama, is essentially a provincial party with a very well-pronounced tribal (Ngwato) character. Tshekedi’s planned ascension to the helm is said to be part of a plan to complete the party’s Ngwato character. As Butale, Wangu is Kalanga and if you buy the theory that Wangu is being used to bring Butale down, you would still be hard pressed to explain why anyone would come up with a plot in which a Kalanga woman brings down a Kalanga man. What fuels allegations about a plot to topple Butale is that rather than “manage the issue” indoors, as apparently happens in the political realm as a way of protecting the party’s image, some powerful people within the party did not use their influence to keep the Wangu matter under wraps.
The nature of the complaint could itself create complications for the hearing. As already stated, Wangu describes rape which she never reported to the police but to a Central Committee member, who himself didn’t and couldn’t report the matter to the police. Rape is a police case and no Disciplinary Committee, not even that of the ruling Botswana Democratic Party, has the power to hear rape cases.
A lawyer, Butale may raise these and many more technical points to thwart any attempts to hear the merits of the case. He would fare very badly with regard to the latter because the audio recordings leave no doubt that he had sexual relations with the BUAN student.
Ultimately though, this is a numbers game and Butale’s fate will be decided by voting. He is already losing this game. Alongside six other Central Committee members, Butale didn’t attend (in protest) the May 20 where the new Disciplinary Committee was endorsed. His fate is now in the hands of that Committee. If he raises any issue at the Central Committee that need to be voted on, his side will be badly outnumbered.
Butale joins a long list of men whose political careers were ruined by ill-advised hanky-panky. But for an extra-marital affair that caused him to share high-value intelligence with a secret lover, General David Petraeus would most likely have become United States president on a republican ticket. It is more than likely that he would have beaten Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Joe Biden last year.
