However charitable one tries, the good times of the eighties and nineties, when Botswana was a paid up member of the international community, respected, revered and even idolized by more sophisticated countries of the developed world are gone. For many of us those years are now a distant memory, unlikely to be repeated under President Ian Khama’s ten year tenure that is now slowly, but thankfully wobbling to a close. As the election campaign proper begins it is important to take stock of ourselves as a country and ask questions of just what has been achieved under the leadership of Ian Khama. This week the Office of the President went to town over some awards that the leader has won somewhere in London. Such victories abroad will count for little at home where people are disillusioned.
Their daily difficulties with life as they try to make ends meet help them see through the spin. If anything such spin can only make them much cynical than has ever been the case. Will an award in London bring them jobs? Of course not! President Khama came into politics with an overwhelming promise to change Botswana for the better. That reached its climax in 2008 when he ascended the Presidency and became the man in charge. But as his tenure draws to a close there is a great feeling of betrayal polluting the air.
Six years into his presidency, the only thing that is beyond question is that he still bestrides the political scene the same way like a towering colossus he was when he was first introduced as Vice President some sixteen years ago. Otherwise nothing about him when he first arrived is today recognizable. He has squandered a great deal of public goodwill and wasted inordinate amounts of political capital on things that have improved neither the country’s education nor its health systems. All the time in office has been about himself. As was the case when he first arrives, he still despises consensus, still spurns compromise, disdains alternative views and wants his word to always be the last. His ambition when he first arrived – and it now has almost been realized – has been to create a monolithic state with himself as its solitary centre of power. With the world moving in a different direction of pluralism, Botswana is thus today much more isolated than was the case when Festus Mogae left it.
Khama’s internationalist father clearly belonged to an altogether different epoch. Intolerance, as epitomized by his attitude towards trade unions, towards the media, towards opposition and most recently towards inner-party critics like Margaret Nasha remains one of his few shiftless defining trademarks. Inner party debate and national dialogue have been thwarted with all men and women in cabinet all but reduced to political pigmies. He shuns unity, yet in a very strange way he goes on to govern with the chutzpah of someone leading a party that has 90 percent share of the popular vote. Reality though is that he once aimed for 70 percent, but ended up with just over 50 percent.
It’s difficult to see how he is able to disregard and almost brush aside the painful reality that at least up to now and notwithstanding his much vaunted personal appeal, he still has not been able to stem the tide in as far the dwindling popularity of his party, which has been consistently shrinking in real terms for a continuous period spanning over twenty years now. A president humbled by leaked intelligence reports that his party was headed for a rocky performance at the polls would have bended an extra inch to appease, assuage, appease and even placate those rightly aggrieved by flawed internal primaries. Instead President Khama has gone on to implement a divisive cabinet reshuffle, before suspending his one-time deputy at the Botswana Defence Force. Inside the ruling BDP, the chorus sympathetic to Major General Moeng Pheto, who by the way has since resigned from the party rather subject himself to a kangaroo court, is in the meantime thickening.
But to Lt. General Ian Khama popular sympathy for Major General Moeng Pheto will amount to nothing. For a political leader who has on numerous instances publicly said he does not like politics, perhaps this is this is not altogether surprising. What I however have a difficulty chewing is how, if his intelligence briefings turns out to be true, is he going to deal with an opposition that is likely to be stronger, more vocal and hell bent on revenge. Perhaps here we have to pause and ask ourselves just how as a country we ended up here. We have to remind ourselves that President Khama is not an ordinary man.
He never was. Right from the beginning he was groomed and prepared for the very ultimate office he currently occupies. But still that does not answer the question as to why when he finally got his turn for a bite at the cherry he started behaving so much like an ordinary man. The key question is what has happened to all the labyrinth of promises he made when he became president? The state media, the BDP and indeed all state apparatus are busy conspiring to make him look like he is the best thing to ever happen to Botswana. Not for the first time, they are selling him as our god sent messiah. From the excitement and euphoria that characterized last week’s BDP Congress, Lt. General Khama is the best president that the country and indeed the party have ever had. It will not wash.
Thankfully, President Khama is a very clever man. Alone in his thoughts, he knows it’s all a big lie that will not last beyond his official term. He knows that by the time he is forced to confront his legacy he will be alone as he faces up to the hard facts, detached from fake fanfare that a congress and indeed state media is bent on creating. Unless he starts to use what little time remains of his presidency, President Khama might as well brace himself for many years of isolated retirement during which time his current army of admirers will, true to their untrustworthiness join the ranks of open critics as they take turns for all evils including those for which only last week they applauded him as he publicly insulted Margaret Nasha in a language that would be said to be vulgar if it was uttered by somebody that is not a sitting President.
