When she came back after a stint in Washington where she served as Botswana’s Ambassador to the United States, Tebelelo Seretse swears that she could barely recognize the Botswana Democratic Party that she had left behind.
Once a formidable political juggernaut, the party is today almost in tatters, consumed, she says, by both inertia and arrogance.
There is a lot of work to be done to bring the party back to a state of a well oiled machine that it used to be.
While in the past people sought positions in it so as to serve, she reckons people are now in it solely for the self; to use positions to show off power trappings and do nothing to enhance the fortunes of the party that put them in those positions.
She candidly admits that the BDP would today be out of power had the Botswana Congress Party agreed to be part of the motley crew that makes up the Umbrella for Democratic Change.
“Some of the constituencies we won, it is easy to see that we are vulnerable. The opinion of the people is that we have grown arrogant. Whether it is true or nor not, it is my aim to find out. We have also failed to address the frustrations of the youth and also those of the workers,” is how she sets the tone of the interview.
She is painfully aware that restoring the party back to its days of glory will be a mammoth task.
It’s easy to say what issues she has determined are top of her agenda going forward.
And those issues roll off her tongue with staggering ease.
The party’s primary election system, called Bulela Ditswe has to be reformed.
For her the system is the source and centre of the all grievances.
Following close by should be genuine efforts on the part of both the party and leadership to connect with ordinary people.
She feels strongly that the party has alienated its traditional base, including not only the multitudes who love and support it but also those who have over the years felt not just unappreciated but in some instances unwanted.
To fix the party there are difficult questions that need to asked and answered.
One of those is to establish why many people who vote in the party’s primaries decide not to vote at the national elections.
More worrying is that there is a possibility many such people end up voting for opposition.
If there were any doubts that the BDP was in trouble, the recent three council by-elections which the BDP all lost should eliminate such doubts.
To account for the loss, Seretse opts to adopt an anecdote the import of which is that she is horrified by how disorganized the ruling party.
She is horrified at how disconnected the party has become from ordinary members.
From her harried analysis since coming back from Washington, she has observed that it would seem like the party no longer wants to be seen to be begging for votes.
She worries a lot that the spirit of staying closer to the voters is no longer there. This is over and above systems that have collapsed.
When she asked which constituency had camped where at the recent by-elections she was shocked to see that there was none. This convinced her that the party had to go back to the ways that used to deliver it victories.
“I visited one of the wards that were under contest. The first question that I asked our team was proof of how the party’s voter’s roll was tallying with that of the Independent Electoral Commission. No such evidence existed. In short, we approached that election without even a faintest idea of how many people were on our side. I choose not to say which ward it was, but it was immediately clear to me that we went into it all to lose. I was shocked by how disorganized we were. This is not the BDP I have always known.”
She is painfully aware that during its glory days, the BDP never used to lose by-elections, which on its own makes it more devastating to lose three at a go as it happened last week.
Famed for her taxing workaholic regime, Seretse has since coming back from America delved full throttle into politics, which she says for her is nothing short of a passion.
She wants to become National Chairman of the BDP.
If she wins, it will be an achievement of a long cherished fairytale-like political dream.
A little less than a decade ago she attempted her first bite at the cherry -and lost.
She was standing against Daniel Kwelagobe, for a long time the party’s most celebrated rainmaker.
“I admire and respect that man. He is the encyclopedia of the BDP. I will be meeting him soon to seek advice,” she says of her one-time political adversary.
This time she will be standing against another Seretse, Ndelu, a former cabinet and a Ngwato royal with whom she shares a surname through a previous marriage to the late Tholego Seretse.
Opposition strategists quietly admit that it is Tebelelo’s combative and confrontational style of politics they fear most.
The contest between the two Seretses promises to be a grand set-piece of the elective Congress set for July.
Her work rate is second to none.
“I have met Ndelu and we have agreed to respect each other. We are not fighting. We are simply giving people a choice.”
In the meantime she has been covering the length and breadth of country telling members of the party that she is back home; for good.
“Many of them [BDP members] think that I am still an Ambassador. I am going around the country telling them that I have rejoined active politics. Politics is my passion,” she says before going back to what she thinks of Bulela Ditswe, the one elephant in the room that sadly for her the party has so far not been able to call out.
She has listened to people who based on their primary election grievances left the party and went on to either stand as independent or in some cases to join the ranks of opposition.
The numbers have been so high that it was almost inevitable that it would destabilize the party going into the General Elections.
And it did. And by her it could have been worse.
Her view is that the high number of independent candidates or Mekoko in the political parlance is demonstration enough that a growing number of people feel taken for granted.
“In the same way that we have been taking our victory over the years for granted, it seems we are taking our members for granted. When you sit down to listen to these people, their chief grievance is that the party did not listen to them, much less address their complaints. They were left with no choice but to walk away,” she says.
She says it is not enough for leadership to keeping harping on their love for the party while not addressing the concerns of the members.
“The concept of Bulela Ditswe is very democratic. But it cannot be right to allow those who have money to buy people to vote them,” she says.
But when all is said and done is she not using the Chairmanship as a stepping stone to the ultimate trophy, the presidency? For the first time in the interview she chooses to go philosophical.
“There is no vacancy for the position of president. When the time comes to choose a president, BDP members will decide on that. The party Constitution has a clause that takes care of that too.”
And from the look of things, the party has just begun.
