“I am not going to get into who said what,” was all former president Lieutenant General Ian Khama would say when asked to confirm what has been alleged about a National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting of the Botswana Patriotic Front (BPF) that took place last Monday.
Khama is BPF’s founder and patron and on the basis of a resolution made at the party’s inaugural national congress, gets to attend NEC meetings. Until November 2021 when he was still in Botswana, Khama attended the meetings (which were held at the Maharaja Restaurant and Conference Centre in Gaborone) in person. However, after fleeing to South Africa to avoid arrest at the hands of the Directorate of Intelligence and Security Services, he is now virtually conferenced in from the meeting venue.
Last Monday, the party, which has cleaved itself into two factions, tussled over whether a planned national meeting next month should be an elective congress or a non-elective special congress. Khama’s faction, which is in the minority, favours the former because its leader (Khama) fancies his chances of trouncing Guma Moyo, who led the other faction. As the meeting got heated, party president Reverend Biggie Butale, reportedly snapped and accused Khama of being a “dictator.”
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