There has always been speculation about how Seretse Khama, the son of Kgosi Tshekedi Khama, slinked in and out of politics before being unofficially named as future Bangwato Regent. How that happened, as confirmed by senior royal sources, reveals the extent to which the Bangwato bogosi (inherited traditional leadership) has become deeply politicised.
Seretse had planned to contest the Serowe North parliamentary seat on the Alliance for Progressives ticket. However, a close family member, Ndelu Seretse, was also eyeing the same seat – which he had held until 2014 when he was unseated by Kgotla Autlwetse. For his own political interests, former president and Bangwato kgosi, Ian Khama, fully supported Ndelu’s candidacy. Khama had fallen out with the Botswana Democratic Party and President Mokgweetsi Masisi and formed the Botswana Patriotic Front. Khama made the most obvious calculation: even if Ndelu didn’t win, his candidacy would weaken the BDP, which he is still hell-bent on destroying.
Royal family sources tellSunday Standard that the solution to a problem of two members of the royal family fighting over the same prize came from Ndelu. He asked Khama to entice Seretse away from politics with the promise of a bigger prize: the Bangwato regency, which is currently held by Kgosi Sediegeng Kgamane. Seretse was himself amenable to the proposal and after all relevant parties were consulted and the deal sealed, dropped out of the race and prepared to take over as Bangwato Regent. We learn that Kgamane was supposed to write a letter to the Minister of Local Government and Rural Development who, in turn, would have written Seretse an appointment letter.
However, Seretse ended up getting the short end of the stick. With the BPF also vying for Serowe North, Ndelu withdrew from the race and the party’s candidate emerged victorious in the general election. As a candidate, Seretse would have had particular appeal to voters who reflexively support the royal family – which means that BPF and Seretse would have competed for this particular type of voter.
All the while, Seretse waited for the appointment letter that never came and it would turn out that his youth indiscretions were being used as excuse to delay his appointment. With the election over, he had no leverage and taking in the full measure of the opposition to his appointment, stepped aside. Resultantly, Kgamane’s contract has been extended to June 2022 while the search for his replacement continues.
The extent to which partisan politics was a factor in the Seretse’s case, strongly suggests that similar consideration will be made with whoever replaces Kgamane.
There are those who implicate Autlwetse, who is the Assistant Minister of Local Government and Rural Development in this saga. The charge made against him is that he withheld Seretse’s appointment letter because he wants to get even with Gen Khama – who certainly played no small role in his defeat in the 2019 general election. (Masisi brought Autlwetse back as a Specially elected MP and made him minister.) It turns out although that Kgamane never wrote the letter. Supposing he played any nefarious role at all, Autlwetse would still have an excuse that places him far away from the crime scene: he is actually junior to the minister (Eric Molale) who makes the final decision on the appointment of dikgosi. Interestingly, received wisdom in BPF circles in Serowe is that Autlwetse purposefully delayed Seretse’s appointment in order to exact political revenge on Khama.
With as much power and influence as he has, Khama could easily have pulled strings to make Seretse regent. That didn’t happen and has set off speculation that the nature of historic relations between the families of Seretse and Gen Khama was a factor.
Seretse’s grandfather (Tshekedi) was virulently opposed to Sir Seretse marrying a white woman because of the cultural implications such marriage portended for an African institution – bogosi. Another and less known theory that has been suggested is that Tshekedi had already found his nephew a wife in Mmadinare – a young woman with very strong royal lineage who would later become a matron at one of the tertiary education institutions in the immediate post-independence period. Based on this theory, Tshekedi was keen to avoid the embarrassment of having to reverse a process that was at an advanced stage.
A royal source confirms that as a direct result of this 1950s incident, relations between the two families have never been cordial. At a point where old wounds were healing, Leapeetswe, Tshekedi’s son and Seretse’s father, made a fateful decision that had the effect of opening those wounds. A few months before his death, Leapeetswe wrote a scathing letter that was published in the Botswana Guardian. In the letter, he attacked Gen, Khama for having no absolutely no knowledge about the customs of a cultural community that he was head of.
“That letter opened up old wounds,” says a senior member of the royal family.
There is another strand of history tied to Seretse’s ill-fated experience with official royal power. Some members of the royal family are said to have felt that his father, Leapeetswe, overstayed his welcome in the regency and did their damnedest to push him out. He resisted such moves, partly to prove to his detractors that he had enough quantities of blue blood to rule Bangwato. At a point when he stepped down and was replaced by Mokgacha Mokgadi, he is said to have vowed that his son, meaning Seretse, would also become regent. It is unclear how this may have factored into the saga that ended with his son falling out of favour for regent but rivalries over a commodity as coveted as bogosi tend to last for very long periods of time.
