Sunday, February 16, 2025

For the sake of BNF, Duma Boko should withdraw from the race

Duma Boko’s ham-fisted attempt to become the leader of the Botswana National Front is fast becoming a crisis for a party that used to be a doyen of opposition politics in Botswana.
If not properly handled, it will also become a crisis for other opposition parties hoping to cooperate with the BNF in the near future.

Even worse, it may also prove a crisis for Boko’s moral authority and credibility.
Questions are coming to the fore demanding answers on whether or not Boko is well qualified to lead the BNF.

Some people are saying he is a carpetbagger who has just come back from the NDF and now wants leadership of a party he deserted when it needed him most.
Personally, I have no interest in just where lies the truth.
I hope the available documents will settle that question.
My worry is that whatever the case may be, Boko’s candidacy is ruining, delaying and reversing BNF’s healing process.

A great number of BNF sympathisers have simply walked away from the BNF.
They look at the party as a contaminated brand whose recovery cannot be guaranteed.
The BNF will never recover unless these people come back.

Any internal fight only delays their return. It cannot be good for the BNF.
When I wrote a few years ago that BNF was on a “chronic” decline, Dumelang Saleshando of the BCP jumped on his feet to offer a correction saying the decline was actually “terminal” because there simply was no way the BNF was going to come back to good health.
I now agree with Saleshando’s choice of words.

His grasp of the English language is impeccable.
The BNF of past years had an amazing knack for resilience.
During the days of Kenneth Koma, the party always found a way out of the most tragic and complex circumstances.

It is this past resilience and reform potential that misled Otsweletse Moupo to argue in the face of all evidence that the BNF could somehow perform well in the last General Elections.
He mistakenly believed that, as it had always done, the BNF would always come back to confound its detractors.

As we all know, the last elections were BNF’s worst in living memory ÔÇô losing a clutch of its traditional heartlands, including Koma’s Gaborone South to the ruling BDP.
To say Moupo and his BNF were humiliated is to underestimate the harrowing inner feelings they must have gone through as results came pouring out.

Together with Moeti Mohwasa, his infernal twin optimist, Moupo played no small part in the BNF demise.
The duo tried long and hard to hide the BNF’s crisis as they secretly tried to resuscitate and breathe life back into the juggernaut; they failed.

In the end, they both threw up their hands in despair, reluctantly agreeing with Saleshando that the ailment had gone too far to be reversed.

In fact, their steadfast attempts to save the BNF almost cost them their own lives.
I hope Duma Boko is not tempted to be the leader of the BNF at all costs, whatever it takes.
BNF has been through so much that any internal fight, however moderate, would simply bring down the whole carcass crumbling on its knees.

Thus if Boko loves the BNF as we have been hearing from his friends in the media, he should do everything to spare the party from a fight it is badly prepared for.
It is true that many had hoped Boko was going to be the saviour that had long evaded the BNF. These people argue that Mr Boko’s youthful age and purported cosmopolitan outlook is just what the party needs to rebrand itself.
They may well be right.

Unfortunately for them, their candidate has not sufficiently answered some pertinent questions about his membership.

He is said to have jumped over some paces one has to go through for them to be a bona fide member, clean enough to become BNF leader. The jury is still out on where lies the truth.
While Boko’s disqualification would no doubt result in a long term psychological self doubt among his legion of diehard supporters who include BNF youth, still the misfortune they feel is much lighter when compared to the ugly prospects that await them were they to plunge their sickly party into a full frontal civil way from which it may never recover.

There are indications that Boko will fight at all costs to become BNF President.
I think that would amount to political negligence, or should we say idleness, especially if it turns out to be true that he loves the BNF.

If for nothing else but the BNF Boko, should step aside, settle for a position less than that of party president and allow the BNF to go through a process of healing.
Only then will those saying he likes the BNF have something concrete to point at sometime in future when his membership is no longer a subject of contest and doubt.

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