Leader of the opposition, Botsalo Ntuane, pronounced several years ago during his tenure as executive secretary of the Botswana Democratic Party, that part of Seretse Khama’s legacy was the foundation of nationhood that he set for newly independent Botswana.
Secondly, Seretse established the basis of a functioning democracy that was respectful of the constitution and the rule of law, collective decision making and respect for the party resolution.
Seretse, according Ntuane, was able to lure the international community into an appreciation of the economic condition of Botswana, then counted among the ten poorest nations of the world with a population of between 250,000 to 300,000 and 220,000 square miles of semi-arid land, five university graduates and about 20 miles of tarred road in Lobatse, Francistown and Mahalapye.
There were four major hospitals ÔÇô Jubilee in Francistown, Athlone in Lobatse, Sekgoma in Serowe and Livingstone in Molepolole – or five or six including Deborah Retief in Mochudi and the Dutch Reformed institutions in Kanye and Mochudi.
The Catholics built St Josephs at Khale and Mater Spei in Francistown. Patrick van Ransburg was instrumental was instrumental in building the brigades based colleges, first at Swaneng in Serowe and later Shashe. Moeng College had long been established under the reign of Seretse’s uncle, Tshekedi.
The Botswana Meat Commission was probably the largest piece of industrialisation in the country linked to a similar commercial complex in Francistown by Cecil John Rhode’s Suid Afrikaanse Spoorweg and Rhodesia Railways.
Fearing that comparisons would be made between the Bantustan system of apartheid South Africa’s ethnic and racial segregation, the colonial government created the Central Kgalagadi Game Reserve for the protection of the indigenous peoples of the country, the Basarwa, from the marauding Setswana speaking tribes and the Afrikaners.
It was the way that the colonial government and Seretse dealt with the problem or question of ethnicity against the backdrop of tribal savagery that engulfed a good part of the newly independent African countries to the north, among them Nigeria and Kenya.
Through this deliberate policy or programme of pacification, Seretse averted political protests by the ‘plaas boere’ of Afrikaner farmers in Gantsi and the Tuli Block who were distrustful of African rule, thereby agitating for a separate state or province for themselves.
A combination of the protectionism of the colonial authority and Seretse’s willingness to make very generous concessions to the Boer republic to the south helped to avert the possibility of a local Afrikaner rebellion backed by the government to the south which was already crafting something of a provincial system of government which included the annexation of the Bechuanaland Protectorate. Seretse let go of land stretching all over what is not the Western and Northern Cape in South Africa and the Caprivi Strip in modern day Namibia.
Then, this method of responding to the ethnic question was reflected in the entrenchment of constitutional provisions for ‘the eight major tribes’ that were guaranteed representation at the House of Chiefs to the exclusion of the Bakalaka, the Basarwa and others.
The Setswana system of deference permitted Seretse, himself a claimant to the Ngwato throne, to craft the legal response to the pervasive problem of tribalism in the manner reflected in the founding constitution. This constitutional resolution was to stalk the nation for several years until it was given to a presidential commission which recommended some reforms which have not received universal acclamation.
Twenty eight years have since passed before the Khama’s went full circle to prevail over Botswana’s presidency. Ketumile Masire for eighteen years and Festus Mogae for ten, came and left, passing on a legacy of acute administrative mediocrity, the better part of it a throw over from the first Seretse, and some of it due to the implosion of a growing culture of personal acquisition in cabinet and growing corruption in the public service.
If Ruretse, Mmokolodi are any indication of the extent of Seretse’s acquisitive instincts, that should explain why his successors were not keen on a thoroughgoing land audit or public exposure of the information at the Registrar of Deeds. That, despite the establishment of an innocuous Land Tribunal which devotes itself only to petty disputes among tribesmen.
The councils keep the deception alive, regularly raiding ‘squatters’ in ‘illegal settlements’, turning a blind eye to the properties of Cabinet ministers and senior civil servants.
By accident, the nation and Local government minister, Englishman Kgabo, stumbled upon corrupt land deals that precipitated the symbolic resignation from cabinet of the powerhouse combination of Vice President Peter Mmusi and Daniel Kwelagobe until the dust settled when the High Court annulled the findings of a commission on account of some feeble technicality. The French Judge Christie arrived and left leaving his work to keep the drama going for a short while as the culprits in crooked property deals found some kind cracks in the woodwork only to return later at the vanguard of the political establishment.
Part of Seretse’s legacy was to leave the country, at the persuasion of Phillip Matante and Motsamai Mpho, with an army that would chew up the Pula that he had changed from Rand as he achieved the first balanced budget of the republic after De Beers found diamond.
The army would not only be the country’s budgetary nemesis of the future, it would also produce the fellow who would save the Botswana Democratic Party from political demise at the 1989 general election, Seretse’s own son, Ian.
And as legend goes, Seretse had warned his buddies that the country was safer with Ian at the barracks than at State House. He had enough warning, as did most readers. Early on, Ian Khama was interviewed in Drum Magazine where he stated his desire to emulate great grandfather, Khama The Great, a warrior who finished his public life as a statesman of sorts.
The word is also out that Ian’s political ambitions were encouraged by his father’s cousin and advisor, Kenneth Koma, who, despite his work in opposition politics, was believed to enjoy Khama’s hospitality at the Sir Seretse Khama barracks and other hidden locations.
In the ‘sell-out’ persona, Koma is believed to have advised, whenever he could, in favour of Ian’s advance into politics because he either did not trust that his own Botswana National Front was capable of ruling, or because he genuinely thought the youthful army commander was the best medicine for the ailing ruling party.
In his other persona, Koma is made out as the grand manipulator of things and people, deliberately puppeteering the political scenario to allow Ian to plunge into the deep end, and with him the Botswana Democratic Party which he would treat as he does the country, like a private resort where his word was god.
Koma’s prot├®g├®s quote him with relish: “Nyaa, ke ne ke raya gore ke lo direle mothoho gore jaanong lo tseye puso ko nteng ga tshokolo ÔÇô My intention was to make life easy for the opposition to take power without a struggle”. According to Koma’s plan, Ian Khama would very quickly foment the situation in which a good section of the electorate would retire to the opposition, now thoroughly fed up with the resort and rule by decree.
Masire was Botswana’s first experiment with a transition of presidential power. The Batswana did not yet believe that Seretse was capable of passing on, so the rules had to be fixed quickly to explain what ought to happen when the sitting president dies.
The least painful process would require the well timed retirement of the president, permitting his deputy to take over, thereby according him the privileges of his predecessor, among them that he would not be required to stand for parliamentary elections and that he would automatically become president of the party.
Masire could not have been expected to perform works of the magnitude that Seretse had done. His was only to console the population through its elongated period of loss. Perhaps his greatest test was to communicate Seretse anger to the striking miners at Selebi Pikwe, suffering the embarrassment of having them pick his car up and turning it on its back.
Seretse blew his top. “Had it been me, I would have ordered the soldiers to shoot you,” he fumed, as only a king would. Once more, the Setswana custom of deference rescued Seretse.
The miner could simply have run riot and closed the mine causing great harm to the economy, and the greatest damage to Seretse’s royal ego. Seretse’s violent response was to form the pillar of industrial relations for the country, culminating in the most recent stay-away by a section of the government employees.
Seretse suffered a good measure of deification at the hands of the system of deference practiced by the BaNgwato, BDP leaders, senior civil servants and the handful of entrepreneurs in the private sector.
Any rot that could have been happening with official corruption and land dealings was smothered under Seretse’s overbearing personality or overlooked until the lesser Masire arrived on the scene. The Botswana Guardian, founded in 1983, exposed financial corruption and maladministration at the Botswana Housing Corporation, opening the lid on the levels of this malady in the para-statals and later at the land boards. Idah Ngope and Chelsea Morrison spilled the beans about the enjoyment of pornographic videos in high office.
Minsters of Local Government and Lands became overnight millionaires, some accumulating farms running into double figures also using their foreknowledge to plat them on planned routes of planned routes of tarred roads where they would get compensation running into the millions. The family of Seretse enjoyed unlimited access to tenders at the BDF.
The recent confirmation of long existent connivance in corruption at Debswana and the Botswana Democratic Party implicates State House. The Lesetedi Commission follows in Mogae’s term.
For the first time the country experiences the Declaration of Emergency to fix horrendous errors of registration at the Independent Electoral Commission.
Mogae, arrived as a welcome breath of fresh air after Masire set the record of 18 years of uninterrupted rule. Nelson Mandela set the example igniting a regional call for limited terms of presidential office inside two terms.
Mogae was praised at the beginning of his term for his hard-nosed administration that refused to bend to demands among the farmers, mainly the Barolong, to cancel their loans at the National Development Bank as had been done for former presidents and people of influence.
Mogae raised Botswana’s profile at the Southern African Development Community and the globe which enjoyed the intellects of the likes of Thabo Mbeki, Robert Mugabe and Kofi Annan who visited Botswana, receiving little coverage from the country’s slumbering press.
That brave entry soon gave way to the myth that said that it was indeed vice president Khama who would see to the effective running of the government ministries, also promising jobs to his constituents in Serowe.
Soon there was a stricter dress code and haircuts reminiscent of the old colonial police force. Officers stood at the gates to monitor the movements of the juniors perfecting that duty when the government workers went on a stay away. Butcheries were ordered to stop braaing meat and the entertainment industry was effectively incapacitated making it impossible for the least privileged of the society to enjoy leisure time.
No sooner had these erosions been instituted against civil liberties, and the case of John Kalafatis served to expose the malignant tumour of killings outside the law, prompting the vice president Mompati Merafhe to comment: One or two killings cannot damage the civil rights image of Botswana. So the right to life, or the denial of it, is no longer left to the High Court, but to the whims of the leading politicians.
The current Khama regime, then, is not fundamentally different in its respect for the constitutional right of citizens ÔÇô right to life, right to freedom of expression, the right to freedom of movement and association ÔÇô and just as importantly, the right of citizens to choice.
As in the early regimes, public institutions such as the information services, are the monopoly of the ruling party and its president, negating the principle of the pursuit of ‘an informed and educated’ society enshrined in Vision 2016. State media reporting on the Kalafatis case and the recent stay-away action of a section of the government employees are glaring examples of the negation of the democratic right of citizens to information.
By implication, the classification of employees into essential and non-essential encroaches upon the right of workers to form and join trade unions, thereby making a nonsense of the constitutional right to freedom of association.
In the end, it can only be concluded that the current regime is quiet consistent with the policy and ideological line of its predecessors; hostility to labour, mockery of the poorest of the poor who are taunted with ‘personal’ gifts from the benevolent oligarch, contempt for human life and celebration of the political and economic impotence of the Basarwa and other disadvantaged ethnic groups and the arrogance of senior state employees. Khanma ga s tsaya fatshe ÔÇô Khama is a chip off the old block.
Is it not alarming that the Japanese, Americans, British, Germans, French and other Europeans also connive in the maltreatment of the trade unions and the disinformation campaigns of the state information services, also wasting money on wasteful institutions such as the Botswana Defence Force, the Directorate on Intelligence Services.
Perhaps it is the radical extremes to which the current Khama regime has led Botswana’s democracy which persuaded Botsalo Ntuane, once a loyal adherent of Seretse’s legacy, to part ways with the BDP, to form the Botswana Movement for Democracy.
