Businessman Lebang Mpotokwane was a key player in seeing to the formation of the Umbrella for Democratic Change (UDC) that brought together three parties which heavily dented the ruling party’s hold on power in the 2014 General Elections. Of recent however those leading the movement appear to be ignoring his wise counsel. In this wide-ranging interview, he warns: What motivated you to start playing a leading role in seeing to the unification of the opposition parties? It was my concern about the irony of Botswana’s multi-party democracy turning itself into a one-party democracy, the one party being the Botswana Democratic Party (BDP). How did you bring together likeminded people that participated in this process – Maphanyane and others? In the early 2000s Motlhabane Maphanyane, Samuel Mpuchane and I often had long conversations about Botswana politics. In particular, we often talked about the ease with which the BDP was able to win election after election since the first one in 1965 as compared to the opposition parties’ continuous poor performance. The conclusion we always reached was that the BDP’s electoral successes were mostly due to the regular split of the opposition vote by the four or so opposition parties. So, one…