Towards the third week of January, I spoke to the former Vice President, Ponatshego Honorius Kedikilwe telephonically exchanging the season’s greetings. He is the one who called in response to my earlier call which he missed. During our conversation, I asked him if he was busy writing his memoirs to which he responded in the negative. He said that, he had decided against doing that because “monna Kwapeng, you all know me”. I was taken aback because all along I had been thinking that he was doing what I was asking for. Nevertheless, I told him that in deed we know him well but not more than he knows himself. Furthermore, I said to him that the style of writing always differs and that his which he usually punctuate with colour and Latin language would make the book much more interesting. His memoirs would also benefit the next generation which does not know PHK. He then added a new dimension to our discussion saying he was tired and did not have the energy to do that. He has run out of steam. This is understandable considering the fact that he is 84 and he never rested since he completed school due to the many roles that he played in public affairs.
From there I informed him of the death of Mohumagadi Mmarakau Kathleen “MmaSeingwaeng”’ Kgafela’s death which occurred earlier that day. He was shocked and expressed the wish to attend the funeral even though the Covid-19 pandemic was taking its toll. He considered MmaSeingwaeng a very important person in the society. He ultimately managed to attend. Kgosi Linchwe II and PHK got on well. PHK even invited Linchwe to Sefhophe to unveil his father’s tomb stone . While there Linchwe observed that PHK was taken at a very high esteem by the people of Sefhophe. He told me on his return that PHK is called minister when in Gaborone but, while in Sefhophe, “villagers refer to him as Moswina, the same way like here when you people refer to me as Kgabo,” adding that, “he is not just an MP”.
PHK made a mark for himself in the public space. In the 70s and 80s, there was a fictitious radio station in Gaborone called “Radio Mall”. It was popular. It was located in the main mall in Gaborone. It had no editors but civil servants working in Gaborone were its reporters. It broadcast at lunchtime and its bulletin carried scoops emanating from the Government enclave. When Phil Steenkamp retired as Permanent Secretary to the President in the 80s, the station announced that PKH was the front runner to succeed. He was the director of personnel at that time, now DPSM. Radio Mall based its prediction on the understanding that PHK was the most formidable character in the public service.
According to Wikipedia, he was educated at the Kikuyu College Social Studies at the University of East Africa in Nairobi, Kenya, University of Connecticut and Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs and Syracuse University in New York. This did not go the way Radio Mall had thought. PHK was overlooked as President Ketumile Masire went for Festus Mogae who by that time was not in the public service. Mogae had worked with Masire at the Ministry of Finance and Development Planning and became a key figure in the country’s remarkable rise to economic prosperity. Like PHK, he was well grounded having been educated in the UK. He had had a stint at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in Washington, DC before returning home to become Bank of Botswana Governor.
PHK was an MP for 30 years starting from 1984 to 2014 when he retired from politics. In between those years, something extraordinary happened. Vice President Peter Mmusi resigned for being implicated in the Mogoditshane land report which was later declared null and void by the High Court after both Mmusi and Daniel Kwelagobe challenged it. Again “Radio Mall” predicted that Kedikilwe was the frontrunner to succeed as vice president. Again it did not happen that way as he was once more overlooked. Masire again went for Mogae as vice president.
When Mogae succeeded Masire as the country’s president, again “Radio Mall” said PHK was the front runner to be the vice president. Again he was overlooked for the third time. At that time PHK had partnered with Daniel Kwelagobe and Gaotlhaetse Matlhabaphiri to form a faction that made PHK to become the BDP’s strong man. He was the party chairman with Kwelagobe as secretary-general. In fact Kwelagobe had already become “Mr BDP” having gained control of the party’s grassroots level. He had outplayed his adversaries to a point where it had become normal that he who challenged him was the obvious loser. PHK and DK were the leaders of a faction of the party called “Barataphathi” while the other party faction was called the “A-team” or “Big five” led by General Mompati Merafhe and Jacob Nkate. Other powerful members of that faction were David Magang, Chapson Butale and Bahiti Temane.
Instead of scouting for the vice president from within the party, Mogae looked outside and recruited General Seretse Khama Ian Khama from the Botswana Defense Force (BDF) to appoint him as his deputy. The idea was to neutralize factions by re-uniting the party and the nation. Mogae had thought that Khama was a diamond and would help unify the depleted BDP. That was not to be as factions intensified. Mogae was later to regret bringing Khama into the party because he did not achieve what he wanted him to do. He told the Voice newspaper on-line that he did so because he thought Ian Khama was a unifier like his father but it turned out that he was not.
When Khama arrived, the A-team gained strength because he signed in their dotted lines. The faction then sponsored him to wrestle the chairmanship of the party from PHK. Unfortunately at that stage, Mogae ended up taking sides by supporting the A-team against the other faction in a bitterly contested election in Ghanzi in 2003. I was the bureau chief in Kanye, an area which included offices in Lobatse, Jwaneng, Tsabong, Hukuntsi and Ghanzi. That gave me the opportunity to join officers in Ghanzi for the coverage of the event. I had the advantage of having access to almost all delegates.
In the process I got to know that PHK was not being removed from the chairmanship because he was a failure. Just before the election day, somebody, I can’t remember if it was Chapson Butale or Jerry Gabaake told me that “we are going to remove Kedikilwe but I can’t tell you why if you were to ask”. The man is powerful and there is no one in the party who can match his abilities but nevertheless we are going to remove him. It was tense during the election, but PHK occasionally broke tension by leading the congress in party songs. Each time he burst with a song, delegates joined him on the stage. He is a very good singer. Gifted. When his time to retire came, Mogae was succeeded by Khama as president. Radio Mall made no predictions about the deputy. It was no longer effective.
Perhaps it had faded away. Khama chose Merafhe to be his deputy. PHK was again overlooked . In the interim, Merafhe retired and PHK was roped in as vice president. He had already made it known that he would not be contesting the next general elections. So appointing him the vice presidency was just to give him what appeared like a nice farewell instead of being a genuine appointment. What did all these overlooking mean to PHK? One can simply say they denied him the chance of being the president of this country. He should have been considered especially after Mogae because everything being taken into account, there was nobody who could overshadow PHK. When they say politics is a dirty game, perhaps this is what they mean.
When Kedikilwe became the Minister for Presidential Affairs and Public Administration on the first occasion, there was tension between the members of the parliament and members of the House of Chiefs. There was Goareng Mosinyi of Shoshong and Geoffry Oteng of Ramotswa leading the onslaught on dikgosi. On the other side were Kgosi Seepapitso 1V of Bangwaketse and Kgosi Linchwe II of Bakgatla manning the defense team of dikgosi. The two houses traded insults most of the time. I was a member of the press team that was assigned to cover proceedings of both houses. One day PHK approached me with a plan to end squabbling between members of the two houses. The plan involved suppressing negative stories emanating from both houses about their members.
In other words, Mosinyi would utter unpalatable language about a particular kgosi in parliament his utterances would only see the light of the day in the Hansard but not in the Daily News or the radio. The same applied to members of the House of Chiefs who would choose to attack an MP. This worked wonders because the private press had not grown to what it is today. Perhaps there was only one newspaper or none. PHK has been the chairman of the University of Botswana Council, a member of the Monetary Preparatory Commission which recommended the establishment of Bank of Botswana and use of the Pula currency in 1976. In 2011, Emperor Akihito of Japan conferred on Dr Kedikilwe the highest award in that country, the diction of grand cordon of order of the rising sun for efforts in sustaining and developing the bilateral relations between Japan and Botswana.
