Comrade Democrat, ntlodise nokana

RYDER GABATHUSE and TSHIRELETSO MOTLOGELWA
Staff writers | Tuesday February 26, 2008 00:00

'O raya ntlodise dinokana?' laughs out Botswana Congress Party spokesperson Dumelang Saleshando when quizzed about the latest phenomenon to drive politicians up the wall with frustration.

Botswana National Front's spokesman Moeti Mohwasa calls it something else. 'Ntlhatlose molatswana'.

And the Botswana Democratic Party's, Dr Comma Serema, this week called it something much more sinister, perhaps not unlike an army commander besieged, he equated it with 'infiltration of the BDP by known opposition activists'.
Whatever they call it, the phenomenon of double registration across party lines is rampant.

Some politicians acknowledge that it has been with them for quite some time, maybe decades, perhaps even as old as Botswana politics itself. Whatever form it takes, it has surely reared its ugly head now, and many candidates at primary election level do not like the sight of it.

Ntlhatlose molatswana. The phrase evokes images of ultimate communal harmony and cooperation. One cannot help but imagine a small community somewhere in Botswana, with unfriendly weather beating down on huts, floods forming and neighbours huddled together under one roof. And then as things get worse. Houses fall. Rivers fill up. It's time to cross the river to another valley, much safer. Ultimately those who are much stronger have to help others across the river to safety.

It evokes too, those by-gone golden days when a driver could never pass another driver stuck in the mud. A driver would give a hand go mo tlodisa molatswana.
The Palapye constituency showed the face of the political version of this phenomenon. A much more sinister but very powerful phenomenon.

Young voters freely flaunted membership cards. One voter had a membership card for both the BCP and the BDP, giving her access not only to choose who would represent BDP at the general elections, but who his BCP opponent would be as well.
Ntlhatlose dinokana is a product of cultural, political and sometimes outright personal conditions.

Culture sits at the heart of this occurrence. Batswana like to think of themselves as very family driven.  And families are big, spanning across political lines and holding strong ties.
For a Motswana, the family is much more than his or her brothers, sisters and parents. It encompasses the extended family. That is, cousins and their parents, and grandparents, and secondly everyone who might happen to be related to these people either through blood or marriage.

In other words, in Botswana culture your mum's cousin could be referred to as your cousin, and her husband, your cousin's husband. And equally your dad's uncle is your uncle, and so your dad's uncle's sons and daughters are your cousins.
The second aspect of family is commitment to it.

Sayings such as bana ba motho ba kgaogana tlhogwana ya tsie underline this. One has to try at all times to further the interests of the family. This may mean anything from taking in a cousin's daughter and raising her, through being a parent to anyone within the family who may have lost his or her parents to offering your old high school textbooks to your mother's cousin's grandchild.

And then if you can do that for your cousin, what couldn't you do for him or her at election time?

 
Not a lot of Batswana would have a problem applying for a membership card in order that they can get a chance to help a relative get numbers in a primary election.
Saleshando says the reason many voters give for possessing so many membership cards is because they sometimes have to help a family member in another political party win a primary election.

'They do not care whether they are from a different party. Someone would just say, 'I applied for this card because I had to help my cousin', and it is difficult to argue with them,' he says. However, Ntlhatlose would not exist without the input of the overzealous and desperate political activist.

As a majority of ordinary people become depoliticised or apathetic, it is increasingly becoming difficult to find fresh constituents for the political activist. Ultimately, many activists say, they have to recycle the same few people who happen to show an interest in politics.

Secondly, those new people who do decide to vote at the primary elections are not well screened to find out whether they are genuine members since candidates are desperate to get numbers on their side. It is an approach that is tinged in Machiavellianism.
Ntlodise nokana is the epitomy of short-cut political activism. 

Activists in desperation see registering a member as more important than actually politically winning the mind of the voter especially at the moment of an impending primary election.

Mohwasa says ntlhatlose becomes very prevalent where a party has all but collapsed at the local level. 'Where party structures are weak or non-existent it becomes very difficult for the party to track what type of new members it is getting,' says Mohwasa. Under normal circumstances, a party is made up of small units which make up bigger units and ultimately the party.

It is at the cell level where new members are supposed to be inducted into the party's ideology before they become members, and it is at that level where members of the party are able to tell who is ready to be a real member and who is not. That local knowledge cannot be availed to the larger party organisation without the input of the cell.

Under the BNF, the cell committee would pass the new members to a ward committee which is responsible for taking the names further up until they are added to the registry.
The constituency secretary would therefore be abreast of events happening in the constituency through these systems. The registry would be brought to the party office where the names are added and cross checked with the voters' roll. These names are the ones that are used during primary elections.

'Under normal circumstances, this system should be fool proof. But at the centre of it are the structures. Once the structures are not active, it is for anyone to just bring new members to the party. There is no checking who is genuine and who is not,' he says.

However, Mmegi investigations reveal ntlodise has been harnessed by political activists to compromise the viability of their opponents within their parties and even outside them.
For example, if BDP candidate A really wants to defeat BDP candidate B, he or she may enter into a secret agreement with BNF candidate A. They may share voters and use each other's numbers to defeat both BDP candidate B and BNF candidate B at the various primary elections.

In other words, the same group of voters that votes in the BNF primaries and elects candidate A would be the same one that defeats BDP candidate B in the BDP primaries.
It is a very short-term tactic in that post-primary elections, both candidates would have to go back and fight for general voters. However at this point each party would be able to harness the larger membership in its ranks to push their own candidates.

However, there is a downside to this system. A party could flood the other with its activists to influence its primary elections. Serema complained about this on Wednesday. It is reported that opposition activists 'infiltrated' the ruling party in the recent Palapye re-run primary.

Known BCP and BNF functionaries fully participated in the primaries, it is reported. Serema is openly unhappy about it. He says the problem of double registration has always been there but at manageable levels. However, he says the modern incarnation is much more worrisome.

He says there are some people who due to 'ulterior motives' would continue with dual membership in an effort to 'destablise' the BDP.
He has vowed to smoke out such characters by tightening the procedures and thoroughly screening those registering. 

Party leaders have a reason to be concerned because the infiltration of the party processes by other parties may lead to unimaginable consequences. BDP members could flood BCP primaries electing weak candidates which they can then defeat at a general election.

The much more dangerous result of this phenomenon is that party's can no longer claim to have the correct picture of their strength on the ground, if they use membership numbers as the basis.

'Normally I would say for you to really know how strong you are, subtract 20 percent from your current membership. The number you get is a much more realistic number of your true membership,' says Saleshando.

It remains to be seen whether, while dabbling in this phenomenon, the political parties might gain from it. A mme tota yone nokana ba tlaa e tlola tota one may wonder.