The Manifesto Experiment and Internal Electioneering in the Botswana Democratic Party

Written manifestos seem to be a rarity in intra-political party electioneering in Africa, and there is a view that African party electioneering is largely nonissue based, instead being personality-driven. This article observes that the phenomenon seems applicable even to Africa's supposed 'senior democracy', Botswana. Yet, the enduring, issueless factional electioneering of the long-ruling Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) resulted in a significant, albeit one-off, interregnum in 2015. In the 2014 general elections, the combined opposition had garnered 53% of the popular vote, while the BDP received just 47%. The BDP managed to hold onto power, however, due to the country's first-past-the-post (FPTP) electoral system. This development appears to have shaken and confused the elites of the BDP and caused concern among the party's hard-line factionalists. Subsequently, Botsalo Ntuane did extremely well in the party's 2015 central committee elections. In an unprecedented move he competed for the influential position of secretary general as an independent candidate and with an actual policy manifesto. This move was outside of the traditional factional sponsorship method long-dominant within the BDP. However, the factionalists soon regrouped and acted to marginalise him and his manifesto. Ntuane consequently performed quite poorly in the later 2017 elections, which once again were fought along strict factional lines with no space for ideas or policies. This article argues that Ntuane's manifesto may have been perceived as too radical and unacceptably ambitious by the conservative party elites. This manifesto also seems to have threatened entrenched personal interests and corrupt practices within the BDP-led government. The article concludes with a note on the dynamics and results of the 2019 general elections.