Three weeks ago I received a call.
“Hi Spencer. The old man would like to have lunch with you. He wants it this week.”
Speaking on the other end was Fraser Tlhoiwe, Senior Private Secretary to former President Sir Ketumile Masire. And as we sat for lunch at Falcon Crest in Gaborone Central, Sir Ketumile was in his typical spirits and humour. He looked to have aged much more since we last met. But he looked fit and healthy. Over his vegetarian meal he delved into his favourite topics.As in all our previous such meetings we talked politics, we talked history, we talked English literature, we talked economics and we talked journalism.
“I still read your articles. One might not always agree with your conclusions, but there is no question that the points are well argued and well thought out and for me well written.”
Our conversations always veered towards his early days in Government; the dynamics, the personalities, the politics and challenges. He has never uttered a single word against Sir Seretse Khama who to the end continued to fondly refer to as “my boss.”
More than two times I asked him why he settled for Festus Mogae as his successor ahead of such experienced and foremost politicians like Ponatshego Kedikilwe and Mompati Merafhe.
“PHK has to this day remained a close friend but I was worried by his big ambition. Every other night I asked myself just what it was that Rre Kedikilwe wanted to do if he was to become President. And that troubled me,” Masire said in one of our conversations.
“General Merafhe was such a capable and efficient minister. But I have never seen a more unforgiving man. He nursed grudges for long times and you don’t need that in a president…”
“Mogae had no ambition. And that sat very well with me,” said Masire of his epoch changing decision.
In our latest meeting he was worried about the trajectory that the country was taking. This thread had permeated all our previous meetings. It had become a common and recurring theme, getting shriller and more emotional with time. But this time he was more pointed. And he thought he had an answer to the problems which he voluntarily proffered.
“Everywhere parties that do not listen to people get voted out of power. BDP has to lose elections,” before adding amid a bout of laughter “but it is still my party.”
He did not like to talk too often against government, firstly because he did not enjoy it but more importantly because it always came at a price of invariably being accused of meddling. But when he did speak it was out of painful knowledge that if he did not, nobody else would as he recently shot down the introduction of Electronic Voting Machines. Such was the pain of his long life. Sir Ketumile had over the last decade had many altercations with the government. But his lowest moment, he told me at least three times was in build up to the 2011 public service strike.
By him a glorious opportunity was missed to avert the strike. And since then it had become a downhill collapse; the government lost grip, the nation became polarised and the public service grew irreversibly demoralised. It was the nation that was paying a heavy price. When it became clear that a public strike was getting ever more likely Sir Ketumile approached president Ian khama with a single piece of advice: to agree to a meeting with trade union leaders.
“I said to the president that he does not need to increase salaries if the economy was not doing well. All he needed to say was that he sympathised with their plight and that he would continue to evaluate what was possible.”
By Sir Ketumile account, president Khama promised to first inform his cabinet before meeting union leaders. In the evening, upon watching news on state owned television channel Sir Ketumile was shocked to learn that President Khama would not be meeting union leaders. That announcement was made to a kgotla meeting the president had addressed somewhere in the countryside. Masire was appalled and dejected. Not only had a promise to him been dishonoured, he also felt the country was being taken along a path of self destruction from which recovery will be impossible. Masire was at his happiest when he discussed his years in Government. His admiration for the civil servants that worked with and for him was breathtaking – both when he was vice president and also president.
He spoke highly of Baledzi Gaolathe, his permanent secretary at the ministry of finance. As president he was served by such distinguished civil servants like Phillip Steenkamp, Festus Mogae and Elijah Legwaila.
“And the greatest of them all was Elijah Legwaila. He made it a point to have a meeting with me everyday when all people had left the office.”
“…Steenkamp was a great public officer who unfortunately for him he was wearing a wrong skin. I released him not because of any fault of his but because there was such a groundswell of resentment against him..”
Other than Festus Mogae, yet another civil servant that fascinated Masire was Titus Madisa. By him Madisa had such a capable mind. “Sadly he also had such serious personal shortcomings.”
Then there were some of his earlier colleagues in politics for whom he reserved nothing but reverence and veneration: Goareng Mosinyi, Moutlakgola Ngwako, Archibald Mogwe, Gaositwe Chiepe, Peter Mmusi, Kebatlamang Morake and of course his long time friend and prot├®g├® Daniel Kwelagobe. Kwelagobe, Sir Ketumile told me many times was always a party man who showed neither interest nor time for government. “Administration was never among his strong areas,” Masire has often said of his beloved product.
Though the two have always had a strong bond, that relationship was tested in the early 1990s when a presidential commission of enquiry found Kwelagobe and Peter Mmusi to have acted on the wrong side of the law in their dealings over land allocations in Mogoditshane. The two contested the commission’s findings.
Of the two the more determined, according to Sir Ketumile was Kwelagobe.
“Mmusi cast the image of a sheep being dragged to a slaughter.”
For Mmusi who was vice-president at the time, the relationship with Masire went far beyond politics. The two had met each other as students in the 1940s. And when Masire got married Mmusi stood behind him as best man. While Mmusi and Kwelagobe were to later resign their cabinet positions in order to clear their names outside cabinet it was not before they had tested Masire’s patience. During one of the meetings where cabinet was to discuss the findings of the commission Kwelagobe insisted on sitting in that same meeting. Masire asked Kwelagobe to leave the room. But Kwelagobe demurred insisting he would just sit and not talk.
“Kwelagobe was clearly very, very angry at the commission’s findings. He was even angrier at some of its members because he felt some of them had an agenda against him. He felt hard done. But still it was wrong for him to sit in a cabinet meeting that was discussing him….”
“I said to him ‘Dan get out. You will soon get me very angry,’..” said Masire.
In the end Kwelagobe walked out.
There were also those in politics with whom Masire had a complex and even difficult relationship – Moutlakgola Ngwako, David Magang and Kenneth Koma, the leader of Opposition Botswana National Front.
By age, Ngwako was Masire’s senior. The two had come a long way from their days as students at Tigerkloof. A strong-willed man, Ngwako had been known to speak his mind even during Seretse Khama’s days as president. But after Seretse’s death it appeared to some that Ngwako’s ambition got the better of him. He became bolder and by other accounts even a bit unruly.
“In the presence of other members of cabinet Ngwako always showed me respect and deferred to me,” Masire said on a number of occasions.
“But the moment it was just the two of us in a room he will bring out his true character. He would say ‘bona monna Quett you can’t run this country without me.’ Everytime I asked him why, he’d say ‘you can even ask Mogwe and Chiepe . They are also saying the same,” said Masire of Ngwako. The relationship between Koma and Masire was mainly that of mutual respect not least because Koma’s elder brother had married one of Masire’s sisters. Beyond that it was almost impossible for Masire to trust Koma. An anecdote is in order. When government had to destroy cattle in the Ngami district because of disease, Masire called Koma into his office to consult. According to Masire, he got support from Koma that government’s decision was a sensible one under the circumstances. Hardly a week later, Koma’s BNF called a public rally where Koma, surrounded by his lieutenants took turns to rally against Masire and government on the matter.
“When I called Koma to protest he blamed it all on Kavindama. It was obviously untrue.”
Masire has had little good words to say about David Magang, a former cabinet minister who he has regarded with thinly veiled disdain. For his part, Magang says it all started when Masire falsely believed he (Magang) wanted to become President following Seretse’s death.
“All I did was to bring other Members of Parliament to discuss succession. I was in favour of Masire’s bid. But somehow he felt I was rallying people against him,” Magang has told me. The meetings he said were held at the residence of his friend, Patrick Balopi. Whatever the true reasons, an irreparable damage had been done.
And when Magang resigned from Masire’s cabinet for the elder statesman there was no love lost.
“He arrived at my farm one weekend to tell me he was resigning from cabinet. I immediately accepted his resignation. For me it was an easy call to make because he was not one of the most effective ministers.”
For his long career in the public service, Masire’s most difficult encounter with government came when he had long left government. Under Ian Khama, Masire felt Botswana government and its BDP were out to humiliate him. He felt devalued and permanently treated in a demeaning manner. In all our conversations any mention of Ian Khama showed a stultifying effect. What lies beneath the impetuous relationship remains a mystery.
Masire was for Botswana a moral compass. His death has clearly left Botswana with a big void. At the end of our lunch three weeks ago, Sir Ketumile demaded that I will be the one picking the tab when we next meet. It is an undertaking I hope to fulfil when we next meet in another world.
*The above article contains extracts from a book on the biography of Daniel Kwelagobe that is still at manuscript level
