“Reviews for the rationalisation of the Office of the President have been completed. The capacity of the Presidential Private Office will be enhanced to be more responsive to the public. A Chief of Staff will assume duty on 1st August 2021” – President Mokgweetsi Masisi on the 13th July 2021 when he first announced the hiring of former cabinet minister and BDP activist Boyce Sebetela by government.
At the time, we all assumed that as part of his new role at Office of the President (OP), Mr. Sebetela was to help President Mokgweetsi Masisi to fix the machinery of government.
One can also assume that by now Mr. Sebetela must have, on a number of occasions, walked into the President’s Office, closed the door and told the president what he doesn’t want to hear. Failure to have done that by now will be a complete failure by Mr. Sebetela.
From the day he accepted the offer, Mr. Sebetela should have known that being the president’s buddy is really not important and should not even cross his mind despite the fact that the two men wear the same political coat. This is because ordinarily as the chief of staff, Mr. Sebetela sometimes would have to be the bearer of bad news to the president. Yes, Mr. Sebetela must act as the president’s honest broker of information. This would help the President to enforce a well-informed decision-making process. Given our socio-economic status now, a well-informed, fully vetted decision-making process is more critical than ever—not only for the president himself, but for the country. Mr. Sebetela must also act as a constant ‘REMINDER’ to the President on difference between campaigning—which is dividing and demonizing—and governing, which requires building coalitions. Not because the President does not know the difference because as a politician it can always be easy to lean more towards campaigning instead of governing and delivery.
Presidential leadership is unique, because it is the intersection of policy and politics, and Mr. Sebetela understands that better than the entire staff he found at OP given his previous post as cabinet minister and years of politicking. This is why after the President, many Batswana look up to him to deliver the nation’s ambition of becoming an inclusive society. A few months before Mr. Sebetela joined government, President Masisi’s administration introduced what we have come to know as RESET agenda. While it is too early to gauge the impact of the RESET agenda on the welfare of the people of the land, it is worth highlighting some of the indicators that also act as red flags that things could be going south. Four years in, there’s a growing sense that the Masisi presidency has lost its way. An Administration that pledged to restore competence and normalcy seems overmatched and reactive. Even the President’s body language, from distance, is beginning to tell that he will soon, if not yet — rattled by the sinking ratings of his administration.
If those indicators and observations are anything to go by, what would be on the line will not be just the President’s RESET agenda, but the whole idea that his administration can get things done differently. Between now and our next general elections President Masisi does not have a lot of time to show that his administration can fix some of the fundamental socio-economic problems, and that’s a huge challenge for any chief of staff, in our case Mr. Sebetela.
Half way into his first term, one can safely assume that President Masisi is looking to regain voters’ confidence and hopefully convince them that he can provide the sure-handed leadership he promised during the 2019 campaign. To date economic crises continue to pile up in ways that have at times made the Masisi administration look flat-footed: record inflation (June: 12.7%), high fuel & food prices, a rise in crime rate etc. This is partially because the President has been caught flat-footed by not one but two pandemics – Covid 19 and the European war. The other contributor is the structure of our economy, which is in the hands of foreigners. It has been for the longest time. That is why if President Masisi wants to go on record as a different leader in the history of our country, he had or still has one task — to hand back the economy to indigenous Batswana. After all he coined ‘Motswana wa Sekei’ phrase which is why Batswana voted for him, to economically empower them. The question now is, to what extent is the RESET agenda, which one assume Mr. Sebetela was brought in to drive of any help now to Batswana to date? Another question is, at bare minimum, is the office of President now more responsive to the public? Whatever the answers are, the #Bottomline remains that there are currently big pieces of the President Masisi’s 2019 promises that are still not settled, and it is really incumbent on him and Mr. Sebetela as chief of staff to redirect the ship in order to seal the deal.
