Had the Botswana Patriotic Front (BPF) held its elective congress late last year, a Khama would have lost an election for the first time in Botswana’s political history. In order to preserve that track record and out of practical need, party patron and former state president, Ian Khama, waged a successful campaign to thwart the holding of such congress.
The election would have pitted Guma Moyo against Tshekedi Khama, Khama’s younger brother and Serowe West MP. Moyo had gained control of the party and was obviously going to trounce Tshekedi. Moyo’s other advantage was that while the Khama brothers are currently living in South Africa, he is on the ground in Botswana and was thus able to campaign more effectively. Perhaps to avoid the humiliation of a Khama losing an election (that has never happened), former Palapye MP, Moiseraele Goya, was brought in as Tshekedi’s replacement. However, he too was soon controversially replaced with the party president, Reverend Biggie Butale who, at the time, was not a member in good standing. Party sources say that upon determining that like Tshekedi and Goya, Butale would also fare badly against Moyo, Khama thought of turning to the Jwaneng-Mabutsane MP, Mephato Reatile, as a last resort. It was soon determined that he too would lose against Moyo.
Taking stock of the situation, Khama raised a slew of made-up complaints and initiated a parallel campaign to have the congress cancelled. He upped the ante by recruiting elected officials – in MPs and councillors – to echo his demands in separate letters that they wrote to the Acting President, Caroline Lesang. Acting in concert, this opposition force objected to the upcoming elective national congress, agitated for the lifting of suspensions and starved the party of cash by stopping the monthly contributions they had been making to the party.
Ultimately, the warring factions opened talks that were mediated by Colonel Isaac Kgosi, the founding Director General of the Directorate of Intelligence Services and Security and long-time Khama aide and confidant. Upon conclusion of the talks, Moyo’s faction strategically “caved in” to all the demands Khama had made. What was to be an elective congress instead became a special conference and the elective was to be held afterwards.
From then until the first meeting of the National Executive Committee (NEC) a fortnight ago, the Moyo faction had been laying low – while it retained an advantage that Khama’s faction didn’t have: numerical strength in the NEC.
During the period of the rapprochement, Khama kicked off a campaign for the presidency, first by feeling out members (and the nation) through an interview on Duma FM. This interview came after 10 councillors from the Serowe constituencies – all of which BPF won in the 2019 general election – visited Khama in South Africa where he has been living in exile since November 2021. The councillor delegation is said to have asked Khama to contest for the party’s presidency in an elective congress that has been pencilled in for April this year. A party source says that the delegation told Khama that only he can unite the party and rein in the indiscipline that is tearing the party apart.
At the time of the Duma FM interview, Khama’s supporters were barnstorming across the country to mobilise support for his candidacy. Officially, they were consulting members on whether they felt that he should run; unofficially they were mobilising support for such candidacy, party sources say. The end result was a January 21, 2023 letter which reads as follows: “Dear Party Patron, [a]s some of the BPF members who requested you to run for the party presidency, we now wish to inform you that after carrying out consultations to establish whether this has majority support amongst others, we now wish to inform you that most were very supportive while a minority were not. Therefore, as you had requested that these consultations be carried out before you decide, we can now report to you that the feedback is positive and we now await your final decision.” The letter is signed off “Members of the BPF” and while it doesn’t identify those members by name, it bears their signatures.
Khama’s final decision, which he has communicated to the NEC, is that he wants to contest the BPF presidency. If he does so, the election will be a mere formality because he would easily overwhelm Moyo – or whoever else runs against him.
The issue of Khama’s candidacy came up a fortnight ago when the NEC met for the first time this year. As he has many times before, the former president joined the meeting virtually from South Africa. A source says that whereas he had fiercely opposed the idea of last year’s elective congress, Khama now wants one to be held and as soon as possible.
“Unlike last year, he is absolutely certain and confident about the outcome: he knows that he would win,” adds the source.
Khama is also said to have enticed NEC members of an almost perpetually cash-strapped party with an offer that he had hoped they wouldn’t resist. He told the NEC meeting that not only would be finance the elective congress, he would also finance the party’s campaign for next year’s general election. The latter would include buying campaign vehicles for all 61 constituencies. That meeting was when Moyo faction chose to play the trump card that it has tucked up its sleeve all along.
It reminded Khama that the peace deal that Kgosi cobbled together specifically says that the elective congress will come after the special conference and that that was what Khama himself had insisted on. The matter was not even put to a vote because Moyo’s faction would have easily won. Additionally, some members of Khama’s own faction voiced out their own opposition to his candidacy.
This resistance has its own dynamic: a party source says that Moyo’s faction is under no illusion of what the outcome of a Khama-Moyo match-up would be. The faction is keen to retain its numerical strength (which translates into a lot of decision-making power) before Khama knocks it off its pedestal at the elective congress.
