This past week on May 12, 2015, Advocate Sydney Pilane made it clear he was not returning to the BMD. He wrote this amidst the tensions occasioned at the party by the recent party youth league crisis. Below is the content of his letter:
“The Botswana Movement for Democracy (“the BMD”) is in the throes of a dispute over the election of the Youth League Committee at the recent Congress. The manner in which the dispute is being handled borders on a crisis. I am told that my name has been mentioned during the ensuing quarrel. The allegation, as I understand it, is that the victorious Youth League Committee led by PhenyoSegokgo wishes me to return to the BMD to replace Hon. NdabaGaolatlhe as the President of the Movement. This allegation, it would seem, is being made to spite Hon. Gaolatlhe into denouncing Segokgo’s Committee. And the tactic seems to be working, and is precipitating a crisis within the BMD.
I write only to correct the record. I am not a member of the BMD, having resigned a few years ago, largely because the then Youth League Committee was forced to leave the BMD for the BDP on account of accusations that they supported me. I was never told in what, for we had just come from Kgale where I had been decisively defeated. In my letter of resignation, I expressed the hope that with me gone, the Movement would stop haemorrhaging in favour of the BDP, and that there would be no reason for anyone to be accused of supporting me. The accusations have returned. It would seem that some, by no means all, those who lost, for whatever reason, have found in me a ready scapegoat.
Since I left the BMD, hardly a week has passed without my being approached with the request to return to the Movement. One BMD Member of Parliament said that members on the ground would be content if I returned to membership, and that I did not have to be active or to accept any position. Each time I told them that I had lost the appetite for party politics and would return only if a serious political crisis occurred in the country or within the Movement. Never has anyone invited me to return to replace either the late GomolemoMotswaledi or Hon. NdabaGaolatlhe. The claim that Segokgo and his Committee wish to remove Hon. Gaolatlhe and replace him with me is nonsense. Before yesterday when I invited Segokgo to come and tell me what was going on, and how my name came into it, I had not seen Segokgo in over a year.
AND LET US BE CLEAR! I have no intention of returning to the BMD to seek to replace Hon. Gaolatlhe or to be included in any structure. If I should return to the BMD, and I do not know if I will, I will not seek any position. I have requested to see Hon. Gaolatlhe in order to reassure him of this. He said he would give me a time. I anxiously await his call. It is my sincere hope that the National Executive Committee of the BMD will handle this crisis with cool heads, and with maturity. And the Committee needs to enforce discipline in the ranks, for the nation is watching the public spectacle with growing apprehension.
Sidney Pilane
Gaborone.
12 May 2015″
Sidney Pilane says he has no intension to oust Gaolatlhe Ndaba (pic)
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