unitex@rubbs.fidonet.org (unitex) (10/04/89)
BOTSWANA: The Political History
Gaborone, September 28, 1989 (AIA/IPS) -- When 360,000 people
vote here on October 7 they will be exercising a cherished
tradition that has seen a rare 23-year period of peaceful
political debate revolving around three parties.
The ruling Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) has held power
since independence in 1966.
But it has never been without opposition. A public opinion
poll, conducted before the October 7 election was officially
announced, confirmed that opposition flourishes and can move
from region to region of the country.
At the 1984 election two opposition parties, the Botswana
National Front (BNF) and the Botswana Peoples' Party (BPP)
took five seats in the 34-seat parliament - one BPP seat
from the Francistown area in the north and four BNF seats
from the towns of Gaborone and Kanye.
But the recent poll, conducted by the University of Botswana
Democracy Project, says the government will probably take the
BPP seat in Francistown but could be defeated in other areas
in the north east of the country, in areas to the south of
Gaborone and at the desert mining town of Selebi Phikwe.
The shifting allegiances reflect a dynamic political history.
Modern post-colonial party politics took off in Botswana
immediately after the shooting of black protestors at a
demonstration in Sharpeville, south of Johannesburg, in South
Africa in 1960. More than 1,400 people fled to the then
British Bechuanaland Protectorate. Many were members of the
African National Congress and the Pan-Africanist Congress,
both of which were banned in the wake of Sharpeville.
The Bechuanaland People's Party emerged from this influence.
The leader was K.T. Motsete, who had helped start the
Nyasaland (now Malawi) African Congress. The Vice-President
was Philip G. Matante (Pan Africanist Congress). The
Secretary-General was Motsamai Mpho (African National
Congress).
The party applied the techniques they had learned in Malawi
and South Africa to the campaign for independence. Strikes
and protest demonstrations occurred in 1963 and 1964.
BPP gained support in most towns and among the people who
live in the area of the northern city of Francistown.
Competing ideologies of nationalism and post-independence
planning led to a split in the BPP. Motsamai Mpho left to
form the Botswana Independence Party (BIP). Later Matante
replaced Motsete as BPP leader, confirming the PAC influence
over the party.
British administrators and their appointed Batswana counter-
parts were scared of the BPP's radical agenda. They
stimulated the formation of the Botswana Democratic Party.
The party contained men who were on the Colonial legislative
council. Many were of royal families, including the leader
Seretse Khama.
The BDP played on the fact that BPP leaders had never held
office and therefore did not know how to govern. BPP was
portrayed as a foreign entity because it contained ANC and
PAC ideologies.
But most historians agree the BDP was able to defeat the BPP
when it came to independence elections because its royal
members appealed to the traditional impulses of the rural
peasantry.
After independence the BPP held on as the official opposition
in Parliament led by Matante. But by 1969 the BPP had been
supplanted by a new party, the Botswana National Front (BNF).
The BNF was started, and is led today, by Dr Kenneth Koma. He
returned from the Soviet Union to form the party just before
independence elections in 1965. The BNF called for a one-
party state, nationalisation of resources, and a "planned"
socialist economy. In time it consolidated various
opposition groups such as the Motsete wing of the BPP and
some emerging worker organisations.
By 1979 BNF was the official opposition. The balance of
forces has remained much the same for the last 10 years,
although the BNF has been slowly gaining the upper hand
over the BPP.
* Origin: AlterNet Better World Communications (1:163/113)
---
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