Bonyongo defies BDP to stand as mokoko

Patricia Edwin | Friday August 8, 2014 12:38

 

“I was chosen by the people to represent them at the upcoming 2014 general elections. Even when I was defeated at Bulela Ditswe, I still chose to become an independent candidate because the people chose me,” he says.

Reverend Boy Farai Bonyongo is one of the four candidates in Tati West Constituency. The others are Philip Bulawa of the Botswana Congress Party (BCP), Richard Gudu of the Umbrella for Democratic Change (UDC) and Reverend Biggie Butale of the Botswana Democratic Party (BDP).  He says his advantage is that he knows the constituency, a significant upper hand, as he believes for one to win Tati West constituency, one needs to know and understand its terrain.

The Nlapkhwane councillor for 15 years, Bonyongo is proud of the fact that he was a student of Chapson Jabavu Butale, which he believes adds weight to his push for Parliament. 

He says that ever since joining politics, the late Butale, who was also his headmaster in Zwenshambe, was his mentor.  Butale, a veteran politician and former cabinet minister, died in 2006. “He taught me a lot about politics, to fight and bring victory to the BDP and I started to fight like a hungry lion. In 1994 I lost the council seat and I waited for 1999 where I won. “In that year, Butale went to Parliament and we lost only two wards,” he recalls. 

Bonyongo was also Charles Tibone’s campaign manager in 2004 and 2009 helped the former Cabinet minister win his constituency both times. In the earlier campaign, the constituency had been split into East and West during the delimitation exercise. “One thing I know is that it is not easy to win Tati West unless and until one knows the constituency well and the people agree,” he says. “When Tibone said he would not be standing for elections, the people found that I was the most suitable candidate. They convinced me to stand and I agreed.”

However, Bonyongo’s hopes went up in smoke as he lost the BDP’s primary elections, in a poll he says was blemished by vote rigging. “The primary elections were not free and fair. Instead I can say it was a ‘Muvhango system’ as there was no fairness at all. “People were deleted from the voters’ roll and so forth,” he says. 

Bonyongo says despite complaints about the alleged vote rigging, the party did nothing.

“Despite all that, I know that I am going to win the constituency because of what happened at Bulela Ditswe,” he says.  “I have dedicated my life to Tati West constituency and as long as I live I will not let the people suffer. “

His campaign revolves around several issues pertinent to the residents of Tati West. One burning concern is infrastructure, particularly the state of the roads.“The road linking Tshesebe, Masunga and Mlambakwena was in NDP8 and NDP9, before disappearing in NDP10. Upon enquiring, we were told that it would be reviewed in the midterm reviews. Up to this day,” he says.  He says another road, the Sebina-Ramokgwebana road, underwent maintenance on both carriages when it should have ideally been reconstructed.

“The road is getting damaged already. I said from the get-go that doing patch work on the road on both sides was the wrong way to go about it, and that it should instead be constructed from scratch, but my points fell on deaf ears,” he says. Bonyongo says patching of the road went on for three years and the project was estimated at P80 million, “money that could have been used to rebuild the road”.  “Why not instead use the money to network roads in Tati West? All these villages such as Mambo, Makaleng, Sechele, Sekakangwe, Masingwaneng, Gulubane, Masukwane, Zwenshambe, Mapoka, Moroka, Gambule, Mlambakwena and Kgari could have a road that networks them together and we could have almost 100 percent tarred roads,” he says. 

Another issue troubling Bonyongo is education, which he believes is much too large to be handled by a single ministry.  “The time to still be having one ministry focused on education has come and gone. We have primary, secondary, brigades and others. We have a vast education system all under one ministry. 

“You can even find a person who has no skill of any handiwork running a brigade and you wonder if this is how things are supposed to work,” he says. 

Like opposition parliamentary candidates in the North East, Bonyongo also views government’s intervention over the Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD) outbreaks as unfair. He believes there was no consultation with affected farmers, prior to the destruction of livestock and the subsequent compensation at fixed levels and terms. “The treatment of the people here and in Bobirwa was not the same and in my view, farmers here were victimised after losing their livestock,” he says.  While he aspires to represent Tati West in Parliament, Bonyongo says voters are not looking for a political MP, but effective representation through area sensitive and focused policies. 

“North East for instance has phane worms and moroja (fruit) and other things that will be specific to North East or Bukalanga area, which means when policies are made, they should be specific looking at that. Government should make policies to suit their needs,” he says. 

Bonyongo, a reverend in the Head Mountain Church, was born in 1953 in Mapoka and schooled in Zwenshambe until Standard Seven before going to South Africa. 

“I went to South Africa in 1971 and stayed in Posmasburg up until 1976. Thereafter I went to Johannesburg and stayed there from 1976 to 1979 working for a security company,” he says. 

In 1979 he came back to Botswana and later joined the Botswana National Front (BNF) from 1980 until 1989 when he moved to the BDP before losing the primaries last year. A devout Christian, Bonyongo began his theology studies in 1990 at the Theology Bible Institute in Tlokweng where he acquired his Diploma as well as a certificate as a marriage officer.