BNF firebrand steps down as youth league leader
Botswana National Front’s Resego Kgosidintsi better known as Petrol Bomb, stepped down from her position as president of the BNF Youth League this past Tuesday. According to a letter she wrote to BNF, personal circumstances have necessitated that she reevaluates her commitments and prioritize certain aspects of her life.
“While I have cherished my time as president, it has become increasingly challenging for me to fulfill the responsibilities and devote the necessary time and energy required for this role,” she said in her letter.
Without a doubt, Petrol Bomb’s resignation came as a shock to many in political circles because she has always been a fireball that feared none. She has always been the kind to take a swipe at political opponents without fear and was fond of tearing his detractors apart whenever she felt pushed into a corner. Her strong and bold personality to take whatever that was thrown at her is what made her stand out most of the time. She has been bashed, ridiculed and was even detained in a police cell at one point but she has stood resolute in her pursuit of life in politics.
In fact, this is one of the many reasons why she made history to become the first ever female BNF youth league president, a position she fought hard to attain. When she announced that she would be contesting the position, she evoked muted murmurs because she had always been labeled a woman with no morals, perhaps because of her straight talk. She had at the time said she never makes uninformed decisions; she speaks to issues that people would rather not talk about and it makes them very uncomfortable, admitting that she was sometimes controversial.
Petrol Bomb said to drive a point home, she would not mind staging a nude protest by herself because it was a unique way of addressing issues of Gender Based Violence but she knew that she would be persecuted for it. She said doing so would be a message to men that seeing a nude woman does not mean the woman belongs to them.
In 2021 when she fell pregnant, she swore the baby would not slow her down. If anything, she would become even more brutal in her blatant speech about issues affecting women because she advocates for change. Though Resego was not available this week to comment further on her resignation, social media was abuzz with news of her stepping down. Some felt it was a step in the right direction because she was now a mother and needed to focus on her baby while others felt it was a loss to politics given that there are a few female politicians of her caliber.
Moreover, some wondered if her resignation meant that she had now given up on her dreams of becoming this country’s president in the future. Through her social media platforms, Petrol Bomb early this week said that she was taking a break from active politics because it is all she has been doing since she was 17 years old. “I am 28 years old and the experiences and bittersweet, my political activism takes a lot from my career advancement. 11 years of my life, I can’t complain but maybe it’s time to try something else,” she said. She went on to update a status on WhatsApp on Tuesday morning saying, “The burden is off my shoulders.”