BNF didn’t reject me—Modubule
Mompati Tlhankane | Tuesday November 1, 2022 06:00
BNF was Modubule’s political home for many years before he was expelled ahead of the 2009 General Election.
He defied the odds that year and went on to win Lobatse Constituency as an independent candidate. After being elected president unopposed in Mahalapye over the weekend, he told The Monitor the BNF never rejected him.
The former Lobatse legislator admitted that there was a time he opted to join the BNF because the BMD was critically injured after the 2019 General Election. The BMD didn’t win any parliamentary seat in the last general election and their only councillor who managed to win later defected.
“It was more like I was left alone and I was thinking aloud. In the end, I decided not to join the BNF,” he said.
Modubule’s brothers-in-arms, Sidney Pilane and Gilbert Mangole abandoned the party so Modubule had no option but to resurrect the once formidable outfit. Pilane, the former BMD president, announced in 2020 that he will not be leading the party going forward while Mangole, the former Mochudi West Member of Parliament (MP) and then BMD secretary-general, was appointed in 2020 as High Commissioner of Botswana to India.
As the only remaining key member from that faction that took part in the infamous BMD congress in 2017, Modubule said the BNF had a lot of conditions when he asked to be re-admitted. “One of their conditions was that I resign from the BMD but I couldn’t do that.
I read their intentions clearly. They wanted me to resign from the BMD so that they could later reject me, therefore, leaving me with no political home,” Modubule further revealed.
Just to keep it safe he added that he wanted to be re-admitted to the BNF first before he could officially resign from the BMD. Modubule also downplayed reports that he chose to resurrect the BMD because he had nowhere else to go. “That is not true, we didn’t want the founder of the BMD, the late Gomolemo Motswaledi’s legacy to die like that.
We had to stand up and make sure what he started doesn’t vanish before the eyes of the nation,” he said. Modubule added that now he faces a huge task of reviving the spirits of other BMD members who had lost hope the same way he did when he considered joining the BNF a few months ago.
It’s not just the BMD that needs a new lease of life but Modubule also seeks to revive his political career by taking back Lobatse Constituency from the ruling Botswana Democratic Party.
Former minister, Sadique Kebonang snatched the constituency from Modubule in 2014 in what was a David vs. Goliath battle. Modubule had been area MP since 1999 after unseating then-incumbent Otlaadisa Koosaletse who had defected from the BNF to form the Botswana Congress Party in 1998.