When officiating at the 2022 Khawa Dune Challenge, His Excellency President Dr Masisi painstakingly sought to reconstruct the origins of this annual spectacle by cheekily asking people who may want to know the identities of those who pioneered the event to enquire from the area Member of Parliament Honourable Brooks.
In view of the unending feud between President Dr Masisi and former President Dr Khama, the opinion of the majority of people who reacted to the president’s remarks was that this was one of President Dr Masisi’s startling creative imaginations to erase Dr Khama’s name from the history of Khawa Dune Challenge.
However, the plan must have exploded in tragic fashion when an old video clip was replayed on social media featuring the then Vice-President Masisi crediting Dr Khama for founding and sustaining the event.
By any standards, that was appalling, childish and a cruel self-deprecating act. The act of squabbling over and taking pride in hatching out such a cheap or even dumb idea by the nation’s leadership is petty and embarrassing. It is like delinquent kids fighting over a doll.
The organizers of the event must have decided to invite the state president as the main guest for purposes of marketing the event’s brand after having been knocked down by the COVID-19 pandemic.
They certainly sought to reconnect with their customers and the Head of State was expected to wave the magic wand and draw a very strong response from holiday makers, then and in the future.
Thus, President Dr Masisi was expected to inspire and give both the organizers and merrymakers a sense of possibility and assurances while also extending his gratitude to all those who have played and continue to play a role in making the event a success.
The president speech should have been grounded in the specific context of promoting the annual extravaganza particularly by prodding stakeholders to do more in improving the core services and diversifying the event’s daily activities to cater for different tastes.
Unfortunately, the president went off a tangent in a childish style, perhaps to wipe out former president Dr Khama’s name from the event’s magnificent history. It really does not matter whether President Dr Masisi was right or wrong about his dry claim, what matters is that the timing was wrong for his revelation.
The event has been on hold for two consecutive years due to COVID-19 and it was at risk of losing its passionate patrons and of being forgotten altogether. It needed to be awakened from the dead hence it was important to avoid official remarks or anything potentially divisive or controversial especially compulsive partisan politics.
However, President Dr Masisi has become synonymous with toxic speech. He is no stranger to careless talk, cheap speech and enflamed rhetoric when engaging in public discourse. Like a willing victim of Tourette syndrome, once given a platform to speak, the president seems to have an irresistible urge for careless, reckless and unpleasant words.
This habit of idle talking as a form of fearlessly speaking the truth has actually morphed into rhetorical brutality of the type of Donald Trump. Earlier in his presidency, the Badge of Courage defended his careless words in the full knowledge that the presidency was not an easy job which is why no individual is ever adequately prepared for it.
We argued that President Dr Masisi needed time to learn about running a government; about managing the hostile and inquisitive public, including stiff-necked recalcitrant social media detectives with a tendency to unearth old audios to set the record straight.
We backed up our arguments with the ideas of renowned presidency scholar Richard Neustadt who states that regardless of prior training, nothing prepares the individual for all the facets of the position of state president.
Richard argues that all presidents enter office ignorant, innocent, arrogant, and that these liabilities can take two, three or even six years to overcome. Some presidents are able to overcome these deficiencies while others complete their terms without having learnt a thing.
Neustadt adds that the learning of a president is driven by events. Drawing on the turbulent, explosive and eventful period of his presidency, Dr Masisi should have by now learnt to assume greater responsibility for his negligent, flat-out rash words.
He has made enough mistakes to have learn from having let his choice of words get the better of him as when it was reported that he had remarked that he was not troubled by Botswana’s developmental challenges so much that he literally drools in his sleep (ke robala abo ke rothisa lethe); the (in)famous ‘ke lelope’ hit. And the x-rated ‘nyatsi e monate go heta mosadi’.
While careless speech is part of life, we ought to be reminded that words carry weight and may also carry a life-time baggage hence the need to be extra careful when we speak.
It is indeed true that in politics there is a silver lining in everything including dishonesty and speaking garbage with impunity but clever chaps use careless talk to persuade rather than to humiliate oneself.
President Dr Masisi is both Head of StateandHead of Government. He is the first citizen with immeasurable loads of influence that knows no boundaries. For this reason, his choice words do matter a lot because any pronouncement he makes whether in jest or whether sweet talking an investor at pig party becomes official.
During the Second World War, the British Government sought to discourage people from careless talk. They launched a national campaign called ‘Careless talk costs lives’. The campaign was an acknowledgement that indeed careless talk, unguarded use of words and reckless speech had the capacity to give away sensitive information to the enemy camp.
In an attempt to discourage people from talking too much, the Ministry of Transport increased lighting of railway carriages on long distance journeys to lure people into reading more and talking less. The moral of this historical account of wartime campaign is to show that indeed to speak excessively or recklessly is to expose one to the possibility of picking own poison.
Before nations started vaccinating their people against COVID-19, then US President Donald Trump twittered about injecting disinfectant to treat COVID-19. In his words, ‘the disinfectant knocks it out in a minute. One minute’.
The media later reported that a few days after, an Arizona man died after taking Trump’s after injecting himself with a disinfectant. It is suspected that many more lives were lost as a result of Mr Trump’s reckless words.
Thus, cheap speech, self-serving remarks and reckless talk by a state president or generally people in leadership positions can have dire consequences for a good number of people as much as it can murder the reputation and undermine the stature of the speaker.
President Dr Masisi’s unwillingness to dump this bad habit by changing his approach to public speaking shows a reluctance to acknowledge that words matter and careless talk do have the potential to devalue his stature as head of state and father of the nation.
In the Book of Matthew 15:18-20, we are warned that words that come out of the mouth come from the heart and defile us. Our tongue exposes our evil hearts and reveals our true-selves. The tongue and its words is an extension of one’s person. Scripture further reminds us that the tongue is restless and full of deadly poison.
President Dr Masisi seems to have a sharp tongue that is threatening to make him a hated figure in society. He needs to acknowledge the negative power of careless words more so that in this age, to deny is to insult the intelligence of citizens and test the patience of those who have avoided harsh commentary on him.
The president’s propensity to speak too much and meander into off-the-cuff, random potshots has reached worrying levels for it has the unintended effect of drawing the unwanted attention of critics and haters.
While it may be difficult for him to tame his tongue, it is important to reckon that failure to make efforts to manage his speech will draw him to other sins and temptations. It is not entirely impossible to be careful in choosing words.
All too often President Dr Masisi falls into the trap of careless words because he want to appear to know what others do not know and/or to boast about having insider information to which only he is privy. This is destructive false wisdom and can be rid of by knowing that there is a time to keep silence and a time to speak and that when it is time to speak, he does so slowly and carefully.
President Dr Masisi can learn much from the ancient wisdom that ‘a closed mouth catches no flies’. But most importantly, the President ought to take his job seriously bearing in mind that ‘to whom much has been given, much will be required’.
