Botswana National Front (BNF)

The Botswana National Front (BNF) has been the main opposition party in Botswana since the 1969 elections. The BNF was founded in 1965, shortly after the Botswana Democratic Party (BDP)’s landslide victory in the self-government elections and just before Botswana gained independence. The initial goal of the BNF was to reunite the various strands of the Botswana People’s Party, which had experienced a split in 1963–1964, and others opposed to the BDP. In 1969, Bathoen Gaseitsiwe resigned from his state-recognized position as chief of the Bangwaketse and joined the BNF. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the BNF was a loose alliance between conservative tribal leaders concerned with the preservation of traditional authority, led by Bathoen Gaseitsiwe, and socialists, led by Kenneth Koma, concerned over the bourgeois policies of the government. The first time that the party was represented nationally was in 1969 when they won three seats in the Ngwaketse region.

The BNF was largely a regional party associated with the Ngwaketse region in the 1970s, but it gradually gained support in other parts of the country. In the 1984 general elections, the BNF gained control of the Gaborone City Council and other urban councils; it also won five of 34 parliamentary seats. In 1994, 13 BNF candidates were elected as members of the National Assembly (out of 40 total). By 1994 the party had adopted the motto “Time for change”. The electoral success and change of motto largely reflected a decreased standard of living, civil unrest, and rising levels of AIDS in the country.

There have been a number of internal squabbles in the party due largely to factionalism. This has led to the splitting of the party several times and the formation of splinter parties whose political ideologies are not appreciably different from those of the BNF. Several splinter parties formed in 1989 and 1994, but the most serious split occurred in 1998 when a dispute over Kenneth Koma’s leadership resulted in the departure of the majority of the party’s parliamentary wing (11 of 13 MPs) and the formation of the Botswana Congress Party (BCP). The split followed an aborted BNF party congress, dissolution of the central committee by Koma, and a bitter court case. In 2003, ongoing actional conflict prompted the BNF’s founder, Kenneth Koma, to form the New Democratic Front. Of these splinter parties, the BCP has gained the most popular support.