By Richard Moleofe
Botswana has been hailed as a leading democracy in Africa for a long time. Anyway our status has since changed when Ian Khama came into our political space in 1998. This is one individual who has done huge damage to our democracy. If Khama liked democracy, he would have gone into quiet retirement instead of putting the country into the mess he has created.
People have since started questioning our credentials when he was president. As though that was not enough, this man has come back to haunt us. We have long been overtaken by countries like Namibia and South Africa. These are the very countries that came to benchmark on us regarding issues of governance.
When Ian Khama became president, he gave a sterling speech at his inauguration. He said he joined the military in his early days to protect democracy. Indeed people join the military to protect democracy but for Khama it wasn’t just that. He went in to consolidate power to himself.
Well, the military exists to protect democracy. In most instances the military barometer that helps to determine whether the institutions serves democracy is determined by the superintendence of the civilian authority. The president being the Commander-in-Chief should have unrestricted access to hiring and firing military chiefs at will within the framework of the law.
The military is never to be feared but is respected in a democratic setting. A very good example of a military that exists to serve its own interests is that of Sudan. The military in that country continues to massacre the people for their own narrow interests. In fact the military in that country has hijacked the country and put democracy in total jeopardy.
The very military that has been sustaining and maintaining Al Bashir saved itself by overthrowing the dictator when they realised that the people were going to finish him off in a matter of a fortnight. Then they pre-empted the situation by toppling him and arresting him along with his ministers. Sudan’s generals have now shown the public their real intent in their action of overthrowing the dictator. It was not in the interest of democracy but this was meant to satisfy personal greed.
If the military in Sudan was interested in establishing democracy, which is something that the population has been calling and demonstrating for, they would have allowed a civilian government to come into place. The African Union spent a long time trying to negotiate a settlement between the opposition and the military and the later could not give in to giving up power. Ultimately they reluctantly did and the power sharing government doesn’t seem to be holding.
People continue to die in Sudan because they cannot rest until democracy is achieved. The military has responded with so much unequal force and killed unarmed civilians. The military in Sudan is not accountable to anyone and hence their actions.
The military in Botswana is completely different as it takes orders from the civilian leadership and therefore they are playing their critical role in defending and protecting democracy. In this country we wake up every morning without the thought of having a military coup. Regardless of the political happenings in this country, the president is still firmly in charge of government and the military.
The moment there are uncertainties regarding the loyalty of the military, other sectors of democracy as a form of governance get shaken. The only time we have had rumours of a coup in Botswana was when five ministers were fingered out to be plotting against the president in the early 1990s. Whatever their intensions were, they would not succeed without the help of the military.
There is a strong believe that the recent salary increases for the men in uniform was meant to bolster the military’s loyalty to the president. This is something that could have come at the time when General Fisher was the commander at BDF but was delayed. These are old recommendations that are more than a decade old. It is just that the hype around that has been trumpeted too loudly and has alarmed civilians. Generally the civil service feels short done because this salary increase came at the time when they were still going through a negotiation process with the government.
The current rift between the president and his predecessor has also been a source of instability in our democracy and it was particularly so when the ruling party was going for its elective congress in April. The biggest problem with the president must have been that the generals at BDF have been appointed by the former president and therefore they might show some allegiance towards him. The fact that the man has no military background is something that probably made his heart skip once or so.
The BDF has acted professionally because they remained silent during the period and did not issue any statements. In Zimbabwe where the president was under threat from losing power to the opposition through the ballot box, the military issued threatening statements that they would not salute a civilian in case Morgan Tsvangirai won the election.
Zimbabwe is another classical example where the military has existed for the purpose of protecting its own interests. The Zimbabwean people were over the moon when the military finally overthrew Robert Mugabe from power. Unknowing to the public was that this happened in order to bring different faces with the same way of governance to that of the man they were removing.
The people of Zimbabwe went on the streets to pressurise Mugabe to leave. And as this was happening, the military chiefs were lining themselves up for new positions and this is why from nowhere General Chiwenga became vice president.
ZDF became very brutal the moment the public protested the rigged elections. This time around when the masses filled the streets to show their displeasure, the military came not for the purpose of supporting them as they did when they removed Mugabe. This time around they came to brutalize the people.
*Richard Moleofe is a Security Analyst
