Botswana National Front
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Botswana National Front
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|---|---|
| Leader | Duma Boko |
| Founded | 1965 |
| Ideology | Social democracy |
| Political position | Centre-left |
| International affiliation | Centrist Democrat International |
| Parliament of Botswana |
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The Botswana National Front (or BNF) has been the main opposition party in Botswana since the 1969 elections. It achieved its greatest electoral success in the 1994 elections, when it won 37.1% of the vote and 13 of 40 parliamentary seats. A factional conflict in 1998 led to the departure of 11 of these MPs, who then founded the Botswana Congress Party (BCP). In the 1999 elections, the BNF's vote share declined to 26% and it won 6 parliamentary seats. In the 2004 general election the party won 26.1% of the popular vote and 12 out of 57 seats. Its representation was sharply reduced in the 2009 elections, with the party reduced to only six seats in the National Assembly of Botswana. The BNF's parliamentary representation fell to 5 seats following the defection of the party's former Vice President, Olebile Gaborone, to the Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) in July 2010.
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 (a group in Southern Botswana) 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 had been represented nationally was in 1969 when they won three seats in the Ngwaketse region.
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