BDP youth never trusted Ntime

A lot of youthful activists in the Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) fell short of telling their party leadership that “We told you so,” when Kagiso Ntime dumped the party this week to retrace his steps back to the Botswana National Front (BNF). Ntime has been flirting with the BDP since 2012. He became a specially nominated councillor in 2014. Ntime did not shock many when he dumped the BDP because when he left BNF in 2012, he had said the party, which was engaged in coalition negotiations with other opposition parties, had lost direction and that the BDP was the only party that he found to have sound policies. But a number of BDP loyalists, especially the youth, took to social media to suggest that they had always seen it coming. Many were even disillusioned, saying their party, the BDP, had in Ntime decided to trust a known staunch BNF activist with a specially nominated seat when they on the other hand had toiled for the party without any reward. One party activist wrote: “Serves us right. When we told our leaders not to trust this guy, they ignored us. Ntime has always been BNF and his move to our party was always questionable.” Another said he hoped President Mokgweetsi Masisi will learn from this experience not to trust entrenched opposition members with immediate elevation into the party structures and positions before assessing them. This he said after another BDP councilor, Mmapula Amos of Phakalane, resigned from the party yesterday after having joined from the Botswana Movement for Democracy (BMD) in June this year. In his resignation letter this week, Ntime did not say much except to express gratitude to the leadership of the ruling party for their hospitality during his six-year stint in the party. This letters serves to inform you that I have reached a conscious and profoundly ideological decision to resign from the BDP with immediate effect. I thank President Dr Mokgwetsi Masisi and former President Dr Ian Khama for granting me the opportunity to serve under their central committees as a member of the BDP Communciations and International Relations sub-committee for two consecutive terms”, said Ntime in a letter addressed to BDP Secretary General Mpho Balopi dated December 3rd 2018. Amos and Ntime’s resignations come at a time when there are tensions within the ruling party as members are alleged to have started aligning themselves with the former president and the incumbent.Both Dr Masisi and Dr Khama have publicly acknowledged that their once great relationship has broken down.