It is hard to even imagine former president Ian Khama begging anyone for anything. However, minutes of a Botswana Patriotic Front National Executive Committee reveal that he “begged” members to not pursue a matter in which a senior party member essentially stole P400 000 from the party.
While the matter was never reported to the police (meaning that a criminal case was never opened against the culprit), what happened was theft. As Sunday Standard has reported in the past, during a meeting with BPF patron, Ian Khama, a deep-pocketed “white businessman”, innocently stated that he would be making “another” donation to the party. Khama sits in NEC and didn’t know of any donation from this businessman that had been declared to the Committee. BPF sources say that he tactfully extracted all the necessary information about the donation. At the next NEC meeting, he tabled the item of a P400 000 that had been given to a senior Committee member, who was in attendance himself, that had never been declared.
Left with no wiggle room, the culprit confessed, offered some cock-and-bull story about why he had not declared the donation and promised to reimburse the money. At that point, however, he had dipped deep into the donation and wasn’t ever able to do as he had promised.
The issue came up repeatedly at Central Committee meetings but the member couldn’t repay the money because of adverse financial circumstances. At least until December last year, one Central Committee member, Roseline Panzirah-Motshome, is said to have been insistent that the culprit (whom she hated with a passion) should pay back the money. However, most members realized the complexity of the situation: taking disciplinary action against the culprit required formal disciplinary proceedings – which would include paperwork. Such paperwork would necessarily have required mentioning the names of the donor and this information could be leaked to outsiders. In a country where the government is the largest consumer of services and products, that would have compromised the business relationship between the donor and that same government.
The latter explains why Khama would “beg” that the issue be abandoned. Minutes of a June 28, 2021 meeting say that “the Patron begged us not to talk about the P400 000” in order to protect both the culprit and the party.
The incident has soured the party’s relations with donors – especially businesspeople who believe that Khama is still a big factor in Botswana’s politics and could be reincarnated in some form. BPF’s donor profile is said to be unusually interesting because it includes people who express anti-Khama sentiments in public but are privately lavishing huge sums of money on the party. These donors want to continue investing in the party but fear that an incident similar to that of the P400 000 might recur. In order to protect their investment, some of these donors are said to have lobbied Khama to formally lead the party as president.
Interestingly, the BPF may not the only party that has to contend with donations that don’t reach the intended beneficiaries. During international trips, especially in the United States and Western Europe, some opposition leaders reportedly collect cash donations from Batswana who live and work there. They then either keep the money for themselves or declare insubstantial amounts to the party. Making an electronic fund transfer might seem the simplest most convenient but is actually the most dangerous because of the digital trail it would leave.
