Approximately two years ago, I wrote that “a few years ago before Ian Khama traded his military uniform for Domkrag’s red painted coats, bars would normally trade between 10am and 12 midnight with considerable room for extension at the sole discretion of the licensing authorities. When Khama became the Vice-President of the Republic of Botswana, he immediately initiated strict and uncompromising enforcement of the existing liquor regulations to ensure absolute compliance with the stipulated times without any possibilities for extension.” I continued thus, “while the public was still trying to digest these unpalatable new orders, Botswana Railways announced that the consumption of alcohol in their passenger trains will be discontinued with immediate effect. People suspected Khama’s behind the scenes maneuvers and command tactics.”
In between these two separate events, Khama publicly warned beneficiaries of the government social grants (destitute grants, old age pension and so on) that he will order the relevant authorities to discontinue such support to individuals using their grants to procure and consume alcohol’ (Mmegi, 10 March 2006). I wrote that “you can guess what will be next on the chopping list. It is generally held that Tirelo Setshaba (The National Service) was terminated at the behest of President Khama. The popular radio programme that was known as Dikgang tsa Palamente fell victim to Khama’s unilateralism.”
The cited opinion piece received strong and threatening rebuttals from The Office of the Vice President and the Ministry of Trade and Industry. Can the two offices still repeat denials of these charges? Khama’s war on alcohol is now public knowledge and he no longer hides behind vague processes like collective responsibility and public consultations. He cares not whether his Cabinet Ministers are with or against him in his war on alcohol. This has marked the birth and instant institutionalization of political fundamentalism in Botswana, spiced with a tasteless policy of unilateralism that has become Khama’s uniqueness and continues to give Botswana a bad reputation. Khama’s crusade against the liquor industry and the recent enlisting of the government media to spread falsehood and depict alcohol as the greatest of all evils reveals a pattern of religious imagery. He has resorted to a skillful mixture of politics and religion to propagate his anti-alcohol gospel by presenting his case as a struggle of good against evil. In a deeply religious, traditionally obedient and excessively gullible society such as ours, a religious-oriented approach to society’s problems would have great appeal. Khama has deliberately and skillfully set the nation against itself by creating a wedge between the righteous and the blameless on one hand against the sinners and crooked on the other by systematic misinformation and deceit.
The struggle of good against evil is mischievously presented to emphasize a sense of responsibility on the part of the president. Yet the sole idea is to create general discomfort, to frighten people by insinuating that Botswana will cease to exist if the alcohol industry is not disabled.
People are reminded that the wages of sin is death. Alcohol related challenges are presented from the perspective of a worst case scenario. To coerce followers to toe the line, President Khama and his budding fascists have taken to making people fearful of some mysterious creature like Satan. The use of street-corner preachers and hapless employees of the Department of Information Services to spread anti-alcohol gospel is intended to brainwash people and intoxicate them with misdirected hatred for alcoholic beverages. But we have to counter this misinformation.
After all even Satan himself once admitted that his evil angels ‘can’t keep the people from knowing the truth’. The task to counter this misinformation is even made easier by the fact that Khama’s prophets have been coerced to deliver the sublime messages without knowing in the least what they mean. Philosopher Plato reminds us that knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind.
A big part of fundamentalist theology emphasizes the idea that man is inherently evil, with the exception of the leadership which is upright, smart and clean and therefore the leader has to devise means to save society from self destruction. It exalts the leadership and its cronies as superior to the rest of us and uses explicit rhetoric to mesmerize the gullible. In his infamous war on terror, President Bush resorted to this curious mix of politics and religion with a view to mobilizing international support for his crusade. Unfortunately he ended up attracting more terrorists.
Political fundamentalism begins with a premise of desired behaviors and life styles imposed from the top and premised on the mis-belief that man is inherently evil. On the basis of this, it is clear that political fundamentalism is antithetical to democracy. By this I mean the democracy of pre-Khama era; not limited democracy that is being nurtured today. Political fundamentalism is antithetical to democracy because it comes with pre-cooked conclusions about what is right and acceptable. These pre-cooked conclusions, derived from fundamentalist theology as they are, are beliefs meant to regulate behaviors and lifestyles of people.
Fundamentalism like unilateralism detaches leaders from the people they lead and causes the leadership to adopt fragmented, simplistic and unsustainable approaches to society’s challenges. That kind of leadership ends up promising everything to everyone. This explains why President Khama’s administration is trapped in selective engagement on issues of national significance as typified by Khama’s obsession to ambush the alcohol industry rather than mobilize the society to prevent and fight bushfires that continue to ravage this drought prone country. Perhaps to him the fires are a result of alcoholism or they simply don’t bother him.
Thus, Khama’s fundamentalist theology has begun to infect the Botswana society particularly those people who seem to be proud of the use of sophistry to obscure the truth.
Is it any wonder then that Khama’s foot soldiers are proposing postponement of the BDP’s Central Committee elections basing their arguments on a child formula and a juvenile’s taste for political stability? The truth is that such proposals are only meant to serve Khama and his intellectually gifted virile pet poodles who present themselves as angels of a united BDP.
Precisely, the last few months have seen successful efforts to stifle dissent, to re-write our constitution to make Khama the life president and of course the use of stick and carrot to enforce orthodoxy for the convenience of a select few. Quite frighteningly, Botswana is becoming very hostile towards its own people. People don’t speak freely on their mobile phones, before they talk they look around, choices in all aspects of life are limited, harassment of employees; especially government employees is now lawful. Equally frightening is that Botswana continues to lose its competitive edge due to a political leadership that is averse to applying its mind to contemporary challenges.
There is an impetus for bulling and the violation of the rule of law. There is emphasis on action not discussions and consultation. Existing programmes are summarily terminated without being subjected to thorough reviews and new ones whose only distinction from the old is their names are dished out to excite the people, for the propaganda of the fundamentalists always finds an echo in the hearts of poor people. In his attempts to promote Fascism, Mussolini argued that there is no need for discussions – discipline suffices hence Fascism came to be typified by totalitarian attempts to impose state control over all aspects of life, a defining feature of Khama’s administration. It is common knowledge that discipline is now President Khama’s magic phrase which dispels criticism and rallies support for peace, prosperity and happiness for all. Botswana’s new limited democracy is characterized by Holism, populism, promotion of militarism as well as promotion of cults of unity and purity.
Political fundamentalism usually metamorphoses into Fascism when those in authority impose their life styles on the people, when those in authority become unreasonably intolerant, when those in authority become notoriously powerful and arrogant. It creates a virtual monoculture where only the views of those who take pride in getting angry on behalf of President Khama make sense while the rest of us provide comic relief, when his notorious cheerleaders form impromptu gangs to strike fear into their opponents.
For a very long time Batswana have treasured an underlying conviction which is that they must be in charge of their lives, make up their own minds about what they believe and make their own choices about how they want to live and how they want to spend their money and their leisure time. Allowing political fundamentalists interests, particularly those of President Khama and his lackeys to trump the interests of the people of Botswana is therefore a naked offence and an unacceptable development. It will be useless to lock ourselves in cupboards and cry loudly for our disappearing democracy. What is needed therefore is to advance against Khama’s messengers that have become as aggressive as Rottweilers.
Democracy has room for discussions among all of us, in which we argue, shout at each other, negotiate and compromise, with no person having excess or special powers over the process as to feed us his crap style of living. Democracy and I mean the democracy that helped to define Botswana as a special case, provides processes in which citizens have equal rights and responsibilities to participate in public decisions. Democracy provides freedom for criticism and dissent that help develop creative, sustainable, effective and fair solutions to challenges that confront us as a people.
We should stay true and never stray from those ideals that have seen us this far.
