“He’s very reserved,” said one of Ponatshego Kedikilwe’s closest aides. He was responding to queries about the Member of Parliament for Mmadinare’s political future in the wake of a breakaway by a section of the Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) to form the Botswana Movement for Democracy (BMD).
“A closed book would be a phrase to describe him”. There have been many others: ambitious, audacious, calculating, intelligent, visionary. But reserved? A strange adjective to describe a man once tipped as president in waiting ÔÇô the BDP strongman who dared to seize the party authority by the throat.
Then again, no one could quite be sure what to expect from Kedikilwe. So little is known of him or his views on politics since he dropped out of the political radar in 2003 that guesswork and speculation have fleshed out the man.
When he announced two weeks ago that he would not be contesting the 2014 elections ÔÇô his admirers and they are many ÔÇô were left to rue what might have been. Analysts agree that if everyone had gone by the original script, Kedikilwe who took over the BDP chairmanship in 1995, would have ascended to the presidency in 1998.
But former President Ketumile Masire had his own plans. Since 1992, he moved to pave the way to the State House for his then vice president, Festus Mogae.
Realising that his chosen heir would not make it on his own steam, Masire rushed through parliament a constitutional amendment which guaranteed that if a president resigned or died in office, the vice president would take over. Under the old constitution, parliament would have convened a special session to elect a new president.
The position of Vice-President had always accounted for a smooth political succession. Masire served as Vice-President and Minister of Finance and Development Planning in the government of Sir Seretse Khama, the first President of Botswana. Following Seretse’s death in 1980, Masire ascended to the presidency. Soon after he assumed the office, Masire chose Lenyeletse Seretse for the position of Vice-President. Lenyeletse Seretse held that position until his death and was succeeded by Peter Mmusi. Mogae succeeded Mmusi.
Despite amendments to the Constitution, Mogae still faced a strong threat from Kedikilwe who had harnessed all the party structures to his side. If Mogae ascended to the presidency, there would be two centres of power, with Mogae running the government and Kedikilwe controlling the party. Unless Mogae built a strong base in the party and wrested the party chairmanship from Kedikilwe, he would be on very slippery ground because the president of the country is elected by the party. Traditionally, the BDP has reserved the chairmanship of the party for the Vice-President to facilitate smooth succession.
Masire orchestrated a process for a smooth political transition. In what, according to Mogae, “will forever remain as a serious indictment of internal democracy within the BDP”, Masire brokered a deal to fix the Central Committee elections, in order to ensure that Mogae took over the chairmanship of the party. In an unprecedented move, delegates at the1997 Congress in Gaborone were asked not to vote for candidates for Central Committee elections but to endorse a compromise list agreed to, behind the scenes, by the warring factions. The Merafhe faction, that backed Mogae, allegedly feared that if they contested the Central Committee elections, they would suffer a humiliating defeat. So, they threatened to boycott the elections, ostensibly on the grounds that the Kedikilwe/Kwelagobe faction had reneged on an earlier deal not to challenge Mogae for the position of chairman of the party. Mogae never attempted to build a constituency for himself in the party. He chickened out of a fight for the BDP chairmanship in 1997, withdrawing his candidature on the eve of the party congress, leaving Kedikilwe unopposed.
Mogae took over as president in April 1998. The threat of a Kedikilwe takeover was, however, still lurking in the air. Mogae brought in Lt Gen Ian Khama from the Botswana Defence Force in an apparent bid to consolidate his hold on power. While Khama’s popularity had not been tested, he was the son of Botswana’s first president and paramount chief of Bamangwato, an area covering over half the constituencies to be contested in the 1999 general elections. The BDP went to the 1999 elections united with Kedikilwe who was chairman controlling the party and Mogae running the government.
Kedikilwe’s waterloo was the 2003 BDP congress. With the backing of President Mogae, Vice President Khama challenged Kedikilwe for the chairmanship of the party. The stakes were high: Had Kedikilwe won, there was a strong possibility that he would have challenged and defeated Mogae for the presidency.
In his bid for the chairmanship, Khama had enjoyed the active backing of the faction spawned by Merafhe, who had failed in numerous attempts to wrest control of the party from the grip of the Kedikilwe-Kwelagobe alliance. When he announced his bid for the chair, Khama was the only man strong enough to defeat the alliance. The entry of Khama into the race also split the once formidable alliance as some followers, attracted by his heritage, bolted from the camp and took up the cudgels on his behalf.
It did not escape close observers of the contest that, unlike in the past when Kedikilwe and Kwelagobe had fought together as comrades in arms, this time around Kwelagobe was absent from Kedikilwe’s corner. As Kedikilwe waged a valiant but ultimately futile battle against a rival flush with resources, family name and the backing of then state president Festus Mogae, the only thing he could count on was a gaggle of committed activists and his courage of conviction that his was a worthy cause.
The Gantsi congress not only moved Khama a step towards complete control of the party, but also resulted in his backers sailing into Central Committee positions on his coattails. After years in the wilderness, Merafhe and his group were finally in the pound seats. Of the erstwhile Kedikilwe-Kwelagobe alliance, the only survivor of the routing was the latter in his position as secretary general. The fact that he returned unopposed was instructive. To Kedikilwe’s hardcore base, the only explanation was that Kwelagobe had an understanding with Khama. This theory is made all the more plausible by an examination of Kwelagobe’s political origins.
Kedikilwe immediately dropped out of political circulation until he re-emerged last week following speculations that he will take over as a transitional Vice President from the ailing Merafhe.
