Koosaletse advises his ailing party, BNF

I served in the country’s best parliament

Former Member of Parliament (MP) for Lobatse, Otlaadisa Koosaletse cut his political teeth in the 1970s while a student at Lobatse Secondary School (Lobsec).

While admitting that the Botswana National Front (BNF) has not been doing well for some time, Koosaletse refuses to blame the party leadership for the setbacks it faces such as the loss of members by resignations.

Many have been critical of the BNF leadership, blaming their leadership style on the current misfortunes of the country’s biggest opposition party.

“I refuse to blame the leadership alone. It is the collective responsibility of the party in general. The BNF must come up with strategies for the retention of its members.

“One of the problems we have as BNF is that we compete against each other unnecessarily,” Koosaletse, a founding member of the Botswana Congress Party and its former President, said.

While not advocating for the abolition of primary elections, Koosaletse counsels that members should know that, if a large number of them contests for the same ward or constituency and then have the losers crying foul, “the result is division, which sometimes leads to sabotage of the winner by the loser, leading to a loss at the national election.”

Going forward, he would like the BNF leadership to come up with strategies of how to retain its members as that is the only way to retain the constituencies and wards.

Koosaletse is concerned that the new generation of leaders seems to go into politics not for the love of service but for personal gains such as a regular salary.

After a stint at the University of Botswana (UB), Koosaletse became a bank employee where he joined the Bank Employees Union (BEU) and held different positions in the union over a period of time.

“I actually founded the Lobatse Branch of the BEU. It was at this juncture that I got attracted to the BNF. The youth generally liked the party’s leftist politics.

“We were exposed to that type of literature mainly by cadres from the various South African liberation movements who were on the run from that country either seeking refuge here or were on transit abroad,” Koosaletse said in an interview.

In 1994 he contested the Lobatse constituency and won by a landslide. This was the 7th parliamentary election and the BNF won 13 of the total parliamentary seats. Koosaletse reminisced of what he believes was

the best-performing parliament ever.

“This parliament discussed a lot of weighty issues resulting in a number of reforms.” He cited the example of the Citizen Amendment Act which allowed children from foreign fathers to automatically become citizens of Botswana.

The other achievement of the 7th Parliament was the introduction of electoral reforms such as the lowering of the voting age from 21 to 18 years.

“This parliament also facilitated the introduction of absentee ballots. We also advocated and brought about the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC),” noted the former MP.

The IEC replaced the previous system where the elections were managed by the Office of the President (OP).

Koosaletse also reminisced with pride how the 7th Parliament took government to task over the Owen Conning Company which provided sub-standard pipes for the North-South Water Project.

The unprecedented electoral success by the BNF in 1994 according to him, gave the BNF activists confidence for regime change in the country.

“The attainment of the 13 seats gave us the hope that change of government was possible in Botswana,” related the former BCP president.

The 1998 BNF split gave birth to the Botswana Congress Party (BCP) which Koosaletse and other BNF MPs and scores of councillors founded.

Koosaletse, who would later rejoin the BNF some years after losing the 1999 elections, told this publication that despite the hostility especially from the BNF towards the BCP at the time, the BCP activists traversed the length and breadth of the country to take it to the people.

“We recognised the need for conscientising the people. It should therefore not surprise anybody that the BCP continues to have such a good following. It has a history of serious mobilisation,” Koosaletse explained, noting that membership mobilisation should be an ongoing activity instead of an election season activity.

“The best defence is to attack your competitor so that you pin the competitor down to deprive the competitor the chance to attack,” he advised

“I am currently on semi-retirement,” he says – meaning that while he remains a BNF member, he has no intentions to contest for either Parliament, council or position in the BNF leadership committees.