Asked to clear his desk and leave the Botswana National Front high office, Otsweletse Moupo still has a fighting chance, but the vultures are circling.
Friday morning Sunday Standard deputy editor, Spencer Mogapi, received a phone call from Botswana National Front (BNF) President Otsweletse Moupo’s long time bosom buddy.
Dr Baatlhodi “Bucks” Molatlhegi wanted to add his two pence worth in support of the argument that Moupo should step down as BNF president.
Sunday Standard editorial team has been receiving a lot of such calls since Thursday, including interviews from other newspapers on the matter. With news that the BNF Executive Committee has asked Moupo to clear his desk and leave the party high office, his friends are abandoning him in droves and most are scrambling to put their spin on the story and garner press support for the Executive Committee palace coup.
“I was in principle opposed to the candidature of Robert Masitara. On the same principles, I am uncomfortable with the continued stay of Moupo as the head of the BNF as well as leader of the official opposition. Moupo is my closest comrade and longtime friend. It pains me to go public on this. But I cannot say with a clear conscience that it is ethically right for Moupo to remain BNF president and leader of official opposition.
It is harming the BNF and our country’s evolving democracy. How can the leader of the official opposition call up his clients to remain calm when the firm in charge of their affairs does not have a practice certificate? How on earth can I say such an issue is a private affair? What is private about a lawmaker’s failure to timeously comply with the laws passed by the very Parliament in which he sits,” says Dr Molatlhegi.
It may be too soon to start writing Moupo’s political obituary, but the vultures are circling. Reports of a plot to oust Moupo were first made public by Vice President Ian Khama. The Botswana Democratic Party Chairman, who stopped short of disclosing that the BDP has planted spies inside the BNF, warned Moupo to take the threat of a coup seriously. He cited intelligence information that a BNF cabal, marching to the beat of a “tribalist” University of Botswana lecturer, is gunning for Moupo’s head. “Most of them, including some in the BNF leadership at various levels, have serious doubts about Moupo’s competence to lead the BNF. We in the BDP agree with them. We are glad the BNF members are beginning to see the light.”
Instead of taking Khama’s statements seriously, Moupo used the national holiday, reserved to honour Khama’s father, to take a swipe at the “Khama dynasty.”
|Et tu Brute: The stab in the back against Moupo harks back to the betrayal of Shakespearean Julius Caesar by his trusted friend, Brutus.
Reports indicate that it is the people who he trusted most, who he would count on during this time of need, that are holding nocturnal meetings plotting his political demise.
Moupo has, in the past, come under severe criticism from BNF watchers who argued that he had allowed himself to be held hostage by a coterie of university lecturers.
Hardly two months ago, Moupo seemed perched comfortably on the BNF presidential throne. He was overwhelmingly re-elected at a party national congress held at Ledumang Community Junior Secondary School in Gaborone. But then for BNF Presidents, Ledumang Community Secondary School has always been a gateway to trouble.
The current turmoil consuming the BNF will, for those with a memory, bring a painfully sad de-javu, for it was at Ledumang Secondary School, that the BNF troubles, from which it is still to recover, started.
That was after a congress was held at that school.
At the beginning of the twilight of his political career, Moupo’s predecessor, Kenneth Koma was reelected unopposed to the BNF presidency at a party congress in Ledumang. The ink had hardly dried on the Ledumang resolutions when Koma found himself on the back foot with some party leaders, many of whom he had literally handpicked and groomed for political office plotting his head.
The BNF infighting reached fever pitch with party leaders ducking flying chairs at a special congress in Palapye which resulted in a protracted leadership battle that ended at the Lobatse High Court. Koma went on to win every turn of the marathon battle right up to Lobatse, suspending and expelling a good number of them before the “rebels” (as he called them) fled to set up the Botswana Congress Party (BCP).
Moupo’s base, though jittery, is hopeful that history may be repeating itself.
His camp is positive and unflinching that Moupo is the people’s man and that, yet again, the “middle class,” led by the university of Botswana lecturers, will be whipped back to the academic halls where they belong.
Taking the leaf from his crafty predecessor, Moupo is understood to be planning to dissolve the BNF Central Committee and call a special congress to resolve the party leadership struggle and take head on whoever would be willing to fancy their chances of upsetting him. And if the power struggle goes all the way to the Lobatse High Court, Moupo has Koma’s precedence on his side.
His detractors, however, point out that Moupo is not Koma; that the BNF leader is missing much more than the charisma of his philosopher predecessor.
“He lacks the essential ingredient to take Koma’s place: Cult personality,” said one of Moupo’s many erstwhile friends who chose to remain anonymous.
The Soviet educated Koma set a high bar for any successor, all the more evident now at the moment of the party leadership crisis. He had the Midas touch who could turn anything into political gold.
Despite his education (as many as about five degrees) and privileged upbringing, Koma effortlessly mingled and spoke the language of the poor.
When the BDP critics tried to ruin his political image by sneering at his humble dress sense and lifestyle, he turned the political jibe into fodder for populist politics.
Koma’s charisma surely played a role. But his Ghandiesque persona gave him the political and moral legitimacy and easy replica of a proud opposition David standing up to the menacing BDP Goliath.
Koma’s charisma also helps explain why even his fiercest critics, including legends like Seretse Khama and Quite Masire, grudgingly recognized and respected his unbreakable attitude – one that is the basis of the feelings he inspire among many of the party grassroots supporters, enduring up to today, long after he retired from active politics and turned his back on the BNF – the party he found and came to own. Moupo, to put it mildly, does not inspire such emotions. His Komaesque humble dress sense has only earned him scorn and rebuff even among the BNF traditional base. One of his fiercest critics, Log Raditlhokwa, a University of Botswana Social Science lecturer, once compared him to a ragamuffin.
“Another problem is that Moupo has very little understanding of the psychology of good looks. He needs to be fixed so that he can project a presidential image. Most professional negotiators and investors cannot take him seriously in his looks. A modern politician must not look like a ragamuffin. He should exude assertiveness, seriousness, and a sense of power, poise and polish. Again, he must minimize the inappropriate laughter that undermines his professionalism.”
But then, in the end, even the mighty Koma could not hold on to the BNF presidency. “If politics can trump this kind of power, then what chance do the lesser mortals have?” This is the analysis Moupo’s critics are offering.
Although he has repeatedly denied it, in more ways than one, Moupo has always been beholden and politically indebted to a small clique of university lecturers who crudely plotted to transplant him from Selibe Phikwe (where he lost more than two elections) into a Gaborone safe constituency, left vacant by the death of the oratorical Paul Rantao.
It is the same band who today care calling for his unceremonious exit, less than a year after President Festus Mogae welcomed him into parliament as Mogae delivered his state of the nation address last November.
Backstabbers besides, Moupo enters the fray with a badly depleted moral currency. The story about his financial problems while on a private trip to the United Kingdom has not been without its effects on his image, causing distress, helplessness and dismay even among his trusted allies.
His battered public standing has not been helped by recent media reports that his law firm has been struck off the roll. And this could see the BNF leader emerging from the losing end of a dirty mud wrestling. His detractors are understood to be prodding clients who complain that Moupo’s law firm has misappropriated their trust money to come forward and lay charges against the embattled leader.
But then, again, it may be too early to write Moupo off the BNF power radar given that he has received a good number of study group lessons from Kenneth Koma – that legendary smooth operator.
