It started inside the Lady Khama Community Hall in Serowe on one Sunday of February 2019 where former President Dr Khama was addressing members of the Botswana Democratic Party (BDP).
The first part of Dr Khama’s address was devoted to bolstering the narrative that he was a target of an assassination plot by President Dr Masisi’s administration. Dr Khama used chilling language to whip up emotions and sow fears of a murderous regime, noting that the regime wants to kill his family and entire Bamangwato tribe.
In not many words, Dr Khama used the occasion to drum up support from his tribesmen for whatever action he may want to take to defend his life and the future of his tribesmen. Once he had set the tone, other speakers wasted no time in expressing their hatred for and stoking resentment against President Dr Masisi and his people.
The second part of his address at the said meeting focused on drawing up a wide range of tactics to undermine, sabotage and damage Botswana’s standing in order to garner local and international support while at the same time isolating his own country.
In keeping with his clandestine plan to brainwash his subjects and the larger community into turning against their legitimate rulers, Dr Khama initially launched a one-man crusade that was characterized by sustained drilling of his loyalists for the role of traitors.
Judging by the reaction of many people during the meeting and long after the meeting, his use of seditious, dangerous and threatening rhetoric achieved its goal of getting people radicalized and ready to participate in planned activities to destabilize a legitimate government.
Since then Dr Khama’s interview especially with foreign media has been chilling and point to a man determined to bring down a government to its knees by hook or by crook. The former president publicly vowed not to rest until he has removed incumbent Dr Masisi from the presidency.
In a frightening and shocking show of grit and willpower to thrash Botswana beyond recognition, Dr Khama brazenly revealed that he has spies within the country’s intelligence community who are supposedly feeding him confidential and classified state to destabilize and eventually overthrow an elected government.
Whether his threats were genuine or just a scarecrow in a field and whether his vow not to rest until he has got his way was serious or grossly exaggerated, such could not be dismissed as the scare of a sickly coward.
For a fact, the more Dr Khama reiterated his loathing of incumbent President Dr Masisi the more his threats went past the confines of being inconsequential more so as the public felt vulnerable and at crossfire for it has the potential to morph into domestic terrorism.
While democracy embraces freedom of speech as cardinal principle in theory and practice and while it also offers opportunities for rabble-rousing and headline-grabbing, when such is propagated by a popular, dynastic former head of state who is also a former military commander with the intention to cause chaos and throw the country into anarchy, that certainly amount to what is called the Fifth Column.
The expression ‘fifth column’ is traced to the Spanish Civil War when the Fascist General Emilio Mola announced that although he was commanding four columns of troops that have surrounded Madrid, the real assault will come from the fifth column that was ready to strike from within.
Since then, the expression has come to refer to traitors, spies, saboteurs, sell outs – entirely individuals and groups that are considered unfaithful or disloyal to their citizenship. In a broader sense, fifth column label is synonymous with persons engaged in activities that seek to undermine state sovereignty.
The most recent usage of the expression came from Russian President Vladimir Putin who justified his military operation in Ukraine as necessary to protect Russia from falling victim to the use of biological and chemicals weapons developed in Ukraine with foreign technical support.
Putin has also railed against the fifth column of national traitors who are backed by the west to destabilize and divide Russia including provoking civil unrest and ultimately destroy the country. According to Putin, it was necessary to distinguish true patriots from scum and traitors who has to be spit out like a mosquito.
Thus, in modern political language, fifth column has come to include an array of individuals and/or groups either contenting for state power or for control of mainstream politics supposedly using threatening language and subversive tactics and/or those whose behaviour threatens national security.
In order to provide context to the application of the fifth column label in Botswana, it is noted that former President Dr Khama has visited Europe where he granted numerous interviews and used those occasions to dismiss Botswana as a banana republic, which interviews were aimed at drumming up support for his crusade for regime change.
While this approach could as well pass the test of lawful mobilization of support to apply pressure on opponents, the use of inflammatory rhetoric coupled with uninterrupted, prolonged astonishing falsehoods and negative comments about one’s own country by a statesman, which comments are specifically aimed at damaging the reputation of one’s country amount to back-stabbing.
During his numerous engagements with foreign media, Dr Khama is often reminded that his choice of approach to removing the BDP from state power by harming her reputation has the potential to compromise the country’s erstwhile international standing and by extension destroy the country’s national economy, former President Dr Khama has flatly refused to tone down his tirade, asserting that if Botswana has to go through a bit of turmoil and discomfort so be it before adding that, ‘I have got a mission that needs to be accomplished…’
In similar contexts, former President Dr Khama has publicly stated that he was determined to use any and all means to bring down incumbent President Dr Masisi’s government. Such firm determination borders on threats of destabilization, sabotage and ultimate overthrow of a legitimately constituted national government by people who, in the words of President Putin, would sell their own mothers just to get what they want.
It is noted that politics is a legitimate platform for changing government and it is thus conceded that former president Dr Khama is using legitimate opposition politics to pursue his agenda of removing Dr Masisi from the presidency.
However, his obsession with foreign media, international trips and his preference for bashing Botswana using toxic language that seeks to portray Botswana as a pariah state that need to be pinched to conform to international practice, arouses fear of an existential threat to this nation.
In his determination to project himself as a formidable force in local politics and also in an attempt to legitimize his illicit politics and influence the direction of local politics to ultimately actualize regime change, former president Dr Khama has successfully tricked his way into Botswana’s main opposition coalition, the Umbrella for Democratic Change (UDC) in a marriage that threatens to plug the country into uncertain future.
At the time former President Dr Khama was still flirting with the idea of working with the UDC, social media commentators expressed concern that Dr Khama’s conflicting loyalties and his British connections could pollute UDC politics because of guilt by association.
The courtship coincided with the UDC newly found riches that enabled the coalition to unleash an unprecedented campaign for the 2019 general election that even left the privileged, deep-pocketed ruling BDP in awe. Since then the UDC has assembled a network of moneyed friends whose agendas remain mysterious.
Fears of a fifth column in Botswana conjure up memories of a captured opposition that is externally funded and controlled; an opposition led by locals in the pay of and working as agents of foreign interests; an opposition with an election war chest never witnessed.
And herein is the more sordid and scary stuff. In recent times, the UDC has sought to justify their receipt of assistance in whatever form, especially from aliens by citing that the ruling BDP has been doing so for longest time, perhaps suggesting that the era of clean politics is in the past.
Across the political spectrum, the fifth column language is applied within the broader context of concerns about threats to national security in varied forms perpetrated mainly by locals with a conspirational agenda that is synonymous with plotting a revolution, with external assistance.
When all is said and done, we must acknowledge that a lot has changed in Botswana and the possibility of an enemy within may not be remote. Whether the threats to make Botswana ungovernable and cause her to go through a bit of turmoil are genuine or whether they are just an attempt to manipulate citizens, such is how mad men announce their arrival at a party.
Yet, countering the ever present threats of the fifth column in a democracy is pretty onerous and frustrating. Be warned!
