At the end of President Festus Mogae’s era, Botswana welcomed a formidable, popular and incessantly quarrelsome President Ian Khama.
He became the centre of everything, good and awful; a master unprecedented in Botswana’s history. All institutions created around this time and many years past recognised this fact and began echoing his beliefs. But the President kept on wanting more and more power and privilege. He was determined to make the new role of the president a super dominant role and he wanted to consolidate that hegemony and make it permanent, at least for the duration of his presidency. For this purpose, President Khama conceived a well coordinated campaign on a national scale that clearly bore his seal, his image and his – and only his – vision. He conjured up a tailored road map to brand his campaign: “The 4Ds of Democracy, Development, Dignity and Discipline”.
Things began to move quickly, catapulted and reinforced by the mischievously accelerated review of the Botswana Democratic Party constitution, precisely to confer more sweeping and arbitrary executive powers on the presidency of the party. The new BDP constitution made the president more powerful than the party.
In fact, the president became the sole owner of the party with members as nominal… or should we say, inconsequential shareholders. At the time these decisions were made they caused little revulsion in the party, perhaps because over the years, successive BDP presidents have used executive powers in the best interest of the party and the accepted wisdom and practice of extended consultations was adequate to limit chances of abuse. Understandably, the party could not have anticipated that at some point in the future, one of their own could spring up and use such powers inappropriately, though legitimately. Party structures endorsed these changes despite the fact that since joining active politics, President Khama has always had things his way with minimum fuss.
The constitution of Botswana and other laws of the country have been abused and given conspiratorial interpretations to suit Khama’s wants and political aptitude. For many years, constitutional provisions conferring unlimited powers on the state president have caused very little harm because former presidents have often worked well to limit these powers by invoking executive powers on very rare occasions and all too often for the benefit of the nation.
We will recall that some were even accused of being reluctant to rule largely because they were not too quick and excited to show off or flaunt their powers by effecting wholesale changes and reformulating processes for policy making. They didn’t allow their rights and entitlements to take the better of them and propel them to ride rough shod over all persons and structures and institutions of governance.
They used their unlimited powers sparingly and modestly conscious as they were aware that power corrupts and intoxicates. This approach allowed them to respect the constitution of the country in the process permitting it to retain its rightful place as the supreme law of the land. As a result, Botswana’s constitution has been described as one of the most concise, broad based and well rounded constitutions in the modern world. In came the aristocrat, a former head of the military whose propensity for the use of both personal and official power and authority is unrestrained; a man who is unapologetically domineering and bossy.
His approach to the use of power redefined the powers, rights and privileges of the state president. His imperial personality and political charm, his overt disregard of institutions of the state and his well chronicled preference for a more direct and personal role in policy making means that president Khama is exempted from normal checks and balances by established state organs in a way that makes him independent of the state. I am no constitutional expert but I have a head blessed with active and functional brainpower so that I can comprehend that which I am no expert at.
In a democracy the national constitution and all other laws exist for the benefit of the people not the president. People do not exist for the benefit of the constitution or the president. Any law that short-changes the people or any constitutional provision that allows the president to torment his people is satanic, evil and a progenitor of a fascist society and has to be electrocuted before it contaminates the entire constitution and renders it a satanic constitution.
The fundamental character of any real democracy is that the state president, while having executive powers, need not dominate, lord, intimidate and manipulate adherents and non-believers like a psychic vampire.
The president must manage the affairs of the nation with humility and treat people and public institutions with respect. Yet since 1998 when Ian Khama joined freedom square politics, we have seen our constitution desecrated with monotonous regularity.
We have seen our constitution stripped off its sanctity and purity at every turn to satisfy personal preferences of the political leadership. We have seen our constitution and other legislative provisos flouted with impunity and most worryingly for the benefit of Khama, his relatives and close friends.
This trend has been going on and it is difficult to imagine it coming to an end any time soon. As a result of this perpetual desecration of the Botswana constitution and other pieces of legislation, it has become patently clear that our national constitution and accompanying pieces of legislation have frightening loopholes that could be exploited by enlightened despots and others with evil intents.
Political party constitutions have also been shown to have leaking provisions that beat even the imagination of a celebrated half-minded village clown. It seems that every time the president is faced with a tricky situation, or every time his authority is legitimately challenged, he deploys eminent legal brains and reputed constitutional specialists unmatched in the modern world, a professional cabal of the highest standing to identify loopholes in the constitution that could be exploited to defuse the situation and permit him to have his way.
This seems to have worked well all the time and has now rendered our internationally acclaimed constitution porous, feeble and a stinking colonial product bedevilled with unimaginable, stupid and shameful school boy errors. This should worry all patriotic citizens including Khama’s dance boys. It calls for immediate remedial action and a comprehensive review of our constitution not only to update it but most significantly to plug up the loopholes that have come to strangle this nation have some merits. The desecration of the national laws also extends to the ruling party where we recently saw the president taking advantage of open-ended provisos to outmanoeuvre his internal competitors.
To a greater extent, provisions in the BDP constitution are used to inform the national constitution such that a revision of the BDP constitution often extends to the national constitution so much that whenever the BDP amend their constitution to expand the power base of the party president, such has to extend to the national constitution in a disguised form precisely to ensure that the party president who also dabbles as the state president enjoys similar powers at both party and national sphere. This enables the president to construct a formidable base of power around control of party structures and organs of the state.
Whereas constitutions in real democracies place severe restrictions on what the President may do, ours have fewer restrictions often leaving everything to the whims of the President. For instance, in the USA Congress has power of confirmation over executive appointments and this helps to check powers of the President. Invariably, the Botswana equivalent of the US Congress acts as a mere supporting cast to the executive. Our government often justifies the use and abuse of executive powers in terms of the need for government to respond quickly to crises yet we need to take serious note that the need to guard against tyranny far outweighs the need for government to respond instantly.
However, an opportunity has been availed if what cabinet Minister Nasha revealed, that the Botswana constitution is to be revised, is anything noteworthy. But it is common knowledge that all the more often such revisions only target provisions that the BDP government chooses to revise and so for their own selfish interest.
Bearing this in mind and taking cognisance of the fact that the BDP often places party interests ahead of national interests, it will be imperative for independent constitutional gurus, collectively or individually to make spirited, thoughtful and thoroughly researched and prepared public presentations particularly on sections of the constitution that give the President unrestricted powers and those open-ended provisions liable to be abused by unethical and parasitic leaders intent on perpetuating their insecure egos and personalities.
The Law Society of Botswana is challenged to take a proactive lead in this regard and compel the government to act accordingly. The new BDP central committee has seen it all in the space of less than 30 days. They have been publicly humiliated, ridiculed, crucified, ghettoised and shamed by the party president, using legitimate powers conferred on him by the party constitution. Their encounter with an excessively powerful, vindictive and subversive leader should spur them to immediately make proposals for a comprehensive review of the party constitution to make it more transparent and firm and deprive tyrants from taking advantage and do as they please. They should wake up to the reality that they are on the brink of extinction and need to act expeditiously to defuse the unlimited powers of the president and prolong their political lives as well as secure the long term future of the party. Should we fail to do the needful at the national and party level, we sure shall remain free though in hell.
Suggestion: The Centre for Strategic Studies of the University of Botswana should design and offer a tailored training program on democracy to our political leaders. The training should, among others, contain strong elements of basic education on civil liberties, the rule of law and principles of leadership.
This will help in avoiding unnecessary violation of both the party and national constitutions by the president who often gets unfettered support from self-serving and uninformed elected representatives.
