Acting on a tip-off, the Directorate of Intelligence and Security Services (DISS) descended on the official residence of former President Lieutenant General Ian Khama on Friday night and discovered a cache of seven unspecified “arms of war” in an outhouse.
Investigating officers Friday night sealed off the armoury at Khama’s official residence. This was after Khama’s security officers reported that seven guns, believed to be unregistered had been smuggled into their armory from Khama’s main residence.
As source close to the incident told the Sunday Standard that a team of security officers called Khama’s neighbors, security officers and domestic staff to witness as they sealed off the armory since they could not raid it at night.
A search team was to launch an official raid on Khama’s official residence Saturday to impound the stash.
At press time, the information we had was that the guns were unlicensed and their origins untraceable.
Communicating with Sunday Standard through an aide, Khama said that he had already learnt through a source that “they have been planting things there to implicate me; that’s why they went at night.”
In terms of the Presidents Pension and Retirement Benefits Act, which was fattened during Khama’s own administration, presidents get a retirement house and staff. The latter includes a private secretary, bodyguards and household workers in the form of chefs, drivers, cleaners and gardeners. Our information is that the armoury where the cache was found was opened in the presence of some household staff members. On the other hand, Khama says that there was no one in the house at the time of the DIS raid.
“It was night,” said Khama who is currently in South Africa and obviously repeating what he had been told by those who were at what press time, was officially a crime scene. “I was told by my private security. No one from my DIS security has told me even up to now.” The “now” was at 1008 a.m. on Saturday morning.
Khama’s security is configured in an odd if risky manner: he has official bodyguards from DIS and private bodyguards that he pays from his own pocket. This unusual arrangement was occasioned by belief, on his part, that some of his DIS bodyguards have been sent by the powers-that-be to spy on him. He has also complained that his security has been degraded by degrees as a ploy to expose him to danger.
To the question of whether he knew whether DIS officers confiscated anything from the house, Khama responded: “I don’t know what was taken or planted.”
Sunday Standard learns from other sources that the cache may be of guns that Khama acquired in his personal capacity when he was still president but upon retirement, gave to his bodyguards to inventorise as DIS property. That would basically have been a donation if he had paid for the guns with his own money. Through that same source, we learn that the outhouse is used by DIS bodyguards.
For three weeks now, Khama and DIS have been playing a ceaseless and rule-bending cat-and-mouse game that started with the High Court issuing a search warrant against him and his former spy chief, Colonel Isaac Kgosi. The search at Kgosi’s Phakalane house yielded service pistols that should have been returned when he left the civil service on May 2, 2018. Kgosi, who was Khama aide-de-camp in the Botswana Defence Force, left the civil service in an unusual way: he was lured to the Office of the President on May 2, 2018, disarmed by army musclemen from the Sir Seretse Khama barracks and fired on the spot by former Permanent Secretary to the President, Carter Morupisi. The state is building a criminal case against Kgosi and thus far, he has cited the dramatic event of May 2, 2018 as the reason he didn’t return the pistols.
On the other hand, DIS instructed Khama to surrender pistols in his possession. He ignored the instruction, whereupon the spy agency upped the ante by giving the former president a deadline (12 noon, November 8) of when he should have handed over the pistols. Ahead of the deadline, Khama, who had travelled to Serowe, his home village, to lobby support from tribal leadership, turned seemingly back to Gaborone but after Palapye, headed towards the South African border. At the Martin’s Drift border gate, he lightened his detail, ordering DIS bodyguards back and proceeding with his private security. After clearing immigration and customs, he crossed into South Africa, was driven to a nearby farm where he was airlifted farther away into the interior. We had asked Khama when he would be coming back but he chose not to respond to the question. That he has not yet been sighted in a country with a well-resourced and hawk-eyed media suggests that he could be in hiding.
