There is effort to avert possible split in the Botswana Patriotic Front (BPF) and the person overseeing such effort is one some wouldn’t expect to be impartial – long-time aide of former president General Ian Khama and founding Director-General (DG) of the Directorate of Intelligence Services and Security, Isaac Kgosi. The four-year old party has cleaved itself into two factions, one led by Khama himself and the other by Guma Moyo, who served a stint in Khama’s government as assistant finance minister. Already, there is fear that the factions might move farther and farther apart and that that may lead to the formation of a breakaway party. As head of a three-person mediation team, Kgosi is working to avert such eventuality. Kgosi’s choice as mediator would be baffling to those who know his history with Khama. Khama and Kgosi met in the Botswana Defence Force where the latter was Deputy Commander and later Commander when Lieutenant Mompati Merafhe retired into politics.
Khama would himself retire into politics in 1998, becoming Vice President to President Festus Mogae. In joining politics, Khama brought along Kgosi, who had been his aide-de-camp in the army. At the Office of the President, Kgosi became Khama’s private secretary and in the final years of Mogae’s presidency, went abroad to undertake intelligence studies that would enable him to set up and head a spy agency that Khama had railroaded through a meek parliament. On April 1, 2008, Khama ascended the presidency and Kgosi the directorship of DISS. DISS is an extension of the presidency, not least because its DG reports to the president. Through Kgosi, Khama increased the already substantial powers of the presidency and to all intents and purpose, the two were effectively co-presidents between 2008 and 2018. When Khama stepped down on April 1, 2018 at the end of his term, he was replaced by President Mokgweetsi Masisi.
A year earlier, Khama had extended Kgosi’s contract. Some saw the latter development as the political equivalent of booby-trapping Masisi’s administration with someone Khama knew would be more loyal to him than the new president. A month later, May 1, Masisi dramatically fired Kgosi. He who was lured to OP and disarmed in the office of then Permanent Secretary to the President, Carter Morupisi, by junior BDF officers – possibly commandoes – who had been especially despatched to OP that morning for that unusual task. Some five years later, Khama and Kgosi are still very close and some in the BPF want to harness the potential benefits of this closeness. Upon leaving the Botswana Democratic Party, Khama, who is also the supreme traditional leader of Bangwato, retreated to Serowe, his tribe’s capital, and formed BPF. The latter would go on to make history by winning three parliamentary seats in the 2019 elections, a few short months after its formation.
While Khama is called BPF “patron”, he is clearly the power behind the throne worn by the president. However, there is a new development that threatens to upset the applecart and it comes in the form of Moyo. Khama’s plan is to make his younger brother, Tshekedi, party president and use the BPF presidency as a launching pad to the vice presidency of the main opposition, the Umbrella for Democratic Change. After 56 years in power and with a Covid-ravaged economy, the BDP is on its last legs and it is just a matter of time (either 2024 or 2029) before the party loses a general election for the first time since 1966. Moyo also wants that same position and if he is successful, he could well become UDC vice president.
Who is to know what more he could want? Moyo’s main strength is that while he is officially merely an additional member in the National Executive Committee, he actually controls the party. Naturally, that has set the Khama brothers and Moyo on a collision path. On determining that Moyo would easily trounce Tshekedi in an elective congress that was scheduled for last month, Khama mobilised support among elected party officials (being MPs and councillors) to lobby against the holding of the congress. As an indication of the panic that had seized Khama’s faction, grievances that had never been officialised were hastily presented alongside an ultimatum. There was also talk of some members breaking away to form a new party that would be nicknamed Mmadinotshi – queen bee. On the face of it, Moyo’s faction lost because it caved and agreed to the cancellation of the congress.
In reality, it won, because it is still in control of the party and will be until the next elective congress. The elective congress has been replaced by a non-elective special congress that will be held on December 3. While both factions were able to establish common ground on that issue, there are still many more areas where they disagree. The major disagreement is on the lifting of suspensions of some party members, all of them aligned with the Khama faction. Among those who have been suspended are founding president, Reverend Biggie Butale, and the Deputy Secretary General Vuyo Notha. Butale’s story is somewhat complex.
He allegedly engaged in hanky-panky with a female university student who is in the party’s youth league and was suspended as a result. His suspension was lifted only in so far as ordinary membership goes and he remains suspended as president. Moyo’s faction is said to be opposed to the lifting of suspensions because that would mean restoring Butale to the presidency. There is fear that upon returning to his position, Butale could dissolve the current NEC and replace it with an interim one that could stay in post long enough for the Moyo faction to be decimated. Following the alleged misadventure with a university student, Butale clashed with Khama, calling him a “dictator” to his face during one NEC meeting. It would seem that Butale is back in Khama’s good graces and the two men are working together to knock Moyo off his pedestal. Taking Moyo out and putting Butale back in the presidency would mean that Khama is once more in control.
That was the case when Butale was still president. As its first order of business, Kgosi’s team has already met with the acting president, Caroline Lesang, and Butale. At press time, it was scheduled to meet some more interested parties over the weekend in Palapye. Among the latter is Moiseraela Goya, a late-comer to the BPF who is also interested in the presidency. A NEC member aligned to Moyo says that his side agreed to Kgosi as mediator because not only is he close to Khama, he can tell him what others won’t deign to lest they displease him. “He won’t be afraid to tell Khama the truth,” says the NEC member who, like his allies, believe that Khama is being unreasonable in his demands. “Kgosi has also been trying to talk sense into him.”
