The strategic blunders that former president Ian Khama has made over the years are coming back to haunt him in a devastating way.
Khama officially became Bangwato kgosikgolo in 1979, a year before his father, founding president, Sir Seretse Khama, died. At this point he was deputy commander in the army – which had been established just two years prior. There was always an understanding that when he left the army, Khama would assume his tribal-role duties at the kgotla. However, upon leaving the army in 1998, he instead went into politics, retaining his position as kgosikgolo. In mixing bogosi and politics, Khama was breaking a taboo that had long been recognised and observed but had never been formalised into law. The institution of bogosi and the kgosi who heads it serve as the crucible of tribal unity while politics, on the other hand, is a divisive, winner-takes-all enterprise. Khama was also setting a dangerous precedent that would see Kgosi Tawana II of Batawana and Kgosi Lotlaamoreng II of Barolong-boo-Tshidi also making a foray into politics before slinking out.
Khama would publicly juggle these diametrically opposed roles in 2012 when he officiated at a cultural event (the installation of Kgosi Kgafela II) in his capacity as Bangwato kgosikgolo. As a matter of fact, he was introduced as Kgosi Khama. This happened when he was also still the sitting president.
Khama would leave office at the end of his term in 2018, epically fall out with his successor, Mokgweetsi Masisi, and form his own political party, the Botswana Patriotic Front (BPF). In the build-up to the party’s formation, Khama conflated tribal affairs with his personal political agenda. Public gatherings convened in aid of this political adventure were billed as “kgotla meetings” and Khama’s kgosikgolo title invoked. These gatherings happened at the Serowe showgrounds and not at the kgotla, the traditional meeting place.
The Khama-Masisi feud has evolved in escalatory fashion and in the latest episode, a search warrant was issued against the former president. Subsequent to that, the Directorate of Intelligence and Security Services (DISS) would instruct Khama to voluntarily hand over some weapons (pistols) in his possession. In Serowe, some residents felt that their kgosi was being harassed by the government and held at least two kgotla meetings to both register their displeasure and send a message that they were willing to stand up for him. The second meeting was followed by a “prayer meeting” at a heritage site in the village.
Attendance at kgotla meetings is always a good indicator of how passionately people feel about an issue. Truth be told, the numbers at all meetings, especially the prayer one, clearly showed that not enough people in Serowe (never mind the Central District) feel strongly enough about Khama’s woes to go to bat for him. This can’t be good news because popular tribal support is what Khama has always counted upon. However, while some people clearly support Khama, the level of support he is getting is not significant enough to worry Masisi. The latter might explain why the president has been overly assertive in dealing with Khama.
The reason for the lukewarm support Khama is getting is a very simple one: his feud with Masisi has a political origin and has been political every step of the way. People are more comfortable supporting a tribal, common-good cause than a personal political one. Khama’s fight against Masisi began on April 2, 2018, a day after he stepped down, when he mobilised members of his tribal age-regiment to come to his aid. That didn’t go down well with members who have always drawn a line between politics and tribal affairs. In pitting BPF against the Botswana Democratic Party, Khama also denied himself the support of a huge section of his subjects who, while willing to support their kgosi, can never even imagine disassociating themselves from a party Khama’s father founded.
There is another strategic blunder from Khama’s past that has also come back to haunt him. As president, he shunned the African Union (AU) and habitually sided with the west when its interests clashed with Africa’s. For the 10 years that he was president, Khama never attended a single AU summit or United Nations General Assembly. Such attendance would have been an opportunity for him to establish personal relations with other leaders outside SADC. He passed up such opportunity and left African leaders mystified when he fielded one of his ministers (Pelonomi Venson-Moitoi) for the position of AU Chairperson. As Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe would later reveal in an unguarded moment, African leaders collectively wondered why someone who had never associated with them wanted them to support his candidate.
“Everybody just said, ‘you, we have not seen your President here,” Mugabe said. “He [Khama] doesn’t attend our meetings and what would happen if we placed our organisation in your hands, in his hands. So sorry lady, we won’t give you the votes.”
Desperate for the support and sympathy of African leaders, Khama has appealed to African leaders. He has written a letter to South Africa’s Cyril Ramaphosa; met Nigeria’s former president, Olusegun Obasanjo; and just last week, visited Zambia where he met the current president, Hakainde Hichilema, former president Rupiah Banda as well as the Foreign Affairs and International Co-operation Minister, Stanley Kakubo. Khama would have had a more receptive audience if he had built a relationship with other African leaders. Some may be out of office but former presidents still have a lot of influence and are often called upon by sitting presidents for advice. Khama is realising, way too late, that he needs to have established relationships that would be working for him now.
With inadequate support from his subjects as well as from African leaders, Khama would have to do something that he has probably never done his entire life: fight the enemy all by himself.
