Thank your Mr Editor for affording me the chance to respond to Comrade Moore’s article about Olebile Gaborone in your Sunday Standard of the 14th November 2010.
I had vowed not to pick the gauntlet that Elmon Tafa started throwing at my feet in 2005 just before the Central Committee elections. In his fear that I was intending to contest for the chairmanship with Nehemiah Modubule, he and the late Mmino Polelo started a running commentary about me in the Mmegi Newspaper. On Monday morning after the article had appeared in the paper, I was walking through the Gaborone ÔÇô Main Mall when someone engaged me in a discussion about the article.
Our discussion went this way:
Ques: “Kante Rre Gaborone who is this Comrade Moore?”
Ans: “He is a certain Elmon Tafa who uses Comrade Moore as a nom de plume.”
Ques: “Oh! There seems to be bad blood between you and him. Why?”
Ans: “Well, Elmon Tafa is one of those self opinionated members of the BNF who regard themselves as the embodiment and an epitome of the ethos of the party.”
Ques: “What does he mean by the statement that BNF policies are clear on how people are supposed to rise to positions of leadership if they are newcomers?” Is it not contradiction in terms that he on the other hand endorses Duma Boko’s election?”
Ans: “Your understanding is as correct or wrong as mine, but do not forget that all of his utterances are either a reflection of his tribalistic inclinations and sentiments or his unbridled hatred for some people. He usually couches them in ideological language which regrettably endears him to some gullible members who apparently subscribe to his Marxist views. In one article he mentioned Magama, Modubule and himself as targets. Why them when other people had also been disciplined? You will then realize that his target is Olebile Gaborone and not a statement of a principle on qualification to run for BNF office. That is, everybody else is entitled to flout the rules but Olebile Gaborone.”
Ques: “Please confirm the allegation that you were a card carrying BDP member planted in the BNF?”
Ans: “I can confirm that I hand delivered my resignation letter to the then Executive Secretary of the BDP ÔÇô Botsalo Ntuane in 2002. As to whether my name remained in the party membership register is nothing I want to concern myself with.”
Ques: “Just briefly how would you describe Elmon Tafa, I mean his value to the party?”
Ans: “Elmon Tafa is an enigma. He views life through pseudo-socialist medium. He is an agent provocateur whose stock in trade is to hurl insults, write obscenities about anybody who crosses his path. He always regards himself as the measuring rod and the pace-setter for the party membership. Any committee without him is a non starter. After the Molepolole congress he was itching to restore his bruised ego by running for parliamentary position in Francistown. Make no mistake about the way Batswana select their leaders, I can only say they are thorough and sometimes harsh in their selection. He got the numbers lower than those usually obtained by the additional committee members of a borehole syndicate ÔÇô fifty six. That figure speaks volumes about where Batswana placed Elmon in their hierarchy of preferred leaders.
Ques: “What does Tafa mean in his reference to the ‘infamous 2007 Molepolole Congress’ and by saying his defeat was the defeat of the course of the struggle?”
Ans: “Let me start with his “infamous 2007 Molepolole Congress” statement. According to Tafa anything that excludes him or that which he does not support is not worthy of note. Surprisingly he participated in the election of the central committee for the position of vice president in which I trounced him convincingly. He then said the elections were unconstitutional. The congress becomes infamous because he lost the election. Why attend an unconstitutional congress and take part in an election organized under the auspices of such a meeting! His presence in that meeting and participation in the election as a candidate legitimized everything that he wants people to believe was wrong. His principle therefore falls flat on its face.
Ques: “He said you ought to remain ‘steadfast and unflinching in your commitment to the course of liberation.’ What is your take on that?”
Ans: “If I may ask, whose liberation? liberation from what? Tafa is stuck on outdated sloganeering which renders the party irrelevant to the current situation. Batswana are a people who will always see a prophet of doom from a distance as they did when he tried his luck in that Francistown constituency. Elmon Tafa’s role in the political education of the party was a clear error of judgment on the part of those who once put him in the position because he has only succeeded in stagnating the party. No growth whatsoever.”
Ques: “Aren’t you worried by his appeal that the BNF leadership must act swiftly and try some damage limitations campaign in your constituency?”
Ans: Not at all. Elmon Tafa should be worried by the exodus that the BNF is currently experiencing due to the hate language he is using against other party members. He should be worried about his abysmal performance in Francistown. He must tell the unsettled membership how he intends to restore the party’s credibility and members’ confidence after he vowed to render the party unmanageable after the ‘infamous Molepolole congress.’ The South East North constituents shall make the right choice without any tutelage from Elmon or the BNF Central Committee for that matter.
Ques: Elmon Tafa says, “One would not be surprised if Gaborone is handsomely rewarded for having had the audacity to infiltrate the structures of the BNF with such impunity.”
Ans: “Very serious innuendo and insulting insinuation indeed. Such talk amplifies and bears testimony to my claim and the claim of other members that the BNF is an unwelcoming organization. One shudders to read such libelous words issuing from the mouth of the self styled ideologue of the party, the man who is now and then given a weighty responsibility to teach the membership about ‘seforanta’. He and others constitute an unwelcoming cabal of self-centered and like-minded individuals, who, apart from wanting their own in certain positions suffer from a sense of entitlement and regard themselves as custodians of party values. This cabal lives in the archaic past where personality cult was the order of the day in the BNF. Regarding the reward I can only say that Elmon Tafa benefitted handsomely from those who paid him to distabilise the BNF between 2007 and 2010. I will be surprised if he is no longer being paid for the sterling work he has done and is still doing. As for me I can only say as a citizen of this country and a Democrat I am not expecting any more or any less than any Motswana and any Democrat can get when the moment is propitious.
“Finally I can only say that some writers have correctly observed that we suffer from some ‘pain body’ which is a baggage from our past and our up-bringing. Some of us may have had abusive parents and that remains indelibly ingrained in our sub conscience waiting to be fed with negative thoughts.”
These pain bodies make us look at life through a negative medium. No doubt Tafa is a product of that background. He is quick and always at liberty to put people in some boxes with weird labels. His reference to President Khama is unfortunate to say the least. When he writes or talks about him, he forgets that he is as much a citizen of this country as he is and even more importantly a human being.
Writing profusely and maligning people does not make you a better and wiser person. Modern day politics is not about how many words you can produce per annum and how many people you can demonise, it is about delivery of service. That is why in spite of your prolific writings in which you are attacking fellow party members, you lost dismally to someone who touches the lives of the electorate positively, someone who resides in Francistown and is in touch with the people there. Not some one who could not even realize that the plot he was claiming to be his house was actually an undeveloped plot. Did you really have to be dragged to court for such misdemeanor Comrade Moore ÔÇô secretary for political education?
In Tafa, the physical man, is encased that “pain body” which feeds on negativity of which targets are those he chooses to give certain labels. Tafa has that cowboy machismo which will never take the BNF anywhere. It will always lock the party in internal strife which showed its ugly face after the Molepolole BNF elective congress. Three years down the line Tafa is still fanning the flames of hatred and preaching hostility. No matter how educated he is and how steeped in BNF policies Elmon Tafa is, and no matter what ideology he espouses, politics is a game of numbers. No matter how low he places Olebile Gaborone in his list of people, Olebile played a role in bringing South East North constituency to the BNF after thirty eight years of independence. Let him be assured that his dismissive and condescending reference to my departure can only please his cronies, but the reality of the situation on the ground is that some members of the party have started to decamp to the BDP. One step forward two steps backward.
I do not know whether it is a historical fact that Adolf Hitler suffered a mental derangement which drove him to the excesses of waging a devastating war against humanity. I am worried that Tafa is suffering from the same ailment which manifests itself in a display of extreme hatred and over evaluation of his self. May God of mercy bless you, Tafa and cure you of the ailment you are currently suffering from for I still believe you can be rehabilitated and recycled for use in some area.
Sydney Pilane: Let me make a passing reference to what Sidney Pilane referred to in a most revolting and demeaning language as he made a swipe at me. He likens my defection to the BDP to “eating one’s own vomit”. Unless I have a serious lapse of memory, is this not the Advocate Sydney Pilane who emigrated to South Africa ostensibly to reclaim the citizenship of a country of his real origin – a citizenship of his parents? He renounced Botswana citizenship and assumed a name that brought him closer to his new citizenship status and his new relations. As soon as former President Mogae assumed the high office of President in 1998 he retraced his steps to be in Botswana in readiness to take up a plum job of the legal advisor to the President. You have either forgotten these things Mr. Pilane or you are hoping that Batswana have forgotten.
Renunciation of citizenship of a country that made you what you are for quick gains in a foreign country is certainly a very serious step to take. In future be careful about the stones you throw for the house you are living in is glazed. Botswana is a very small village with a small population and we know each other. I wish you and the BMD all the best in the future.
