Years before Ian Khama’s two-five year terms as President of the Republic of Botswana ended, a lot of events and pronouncements gave out warning beeps that Botswana’s routine presidential transition was likely to be dishonored but we conveniently ignored them.
Former President Khama’s willingness to concede grounds for the sake of progress, his callousness is dealing with those he perceived as a stumbling block to his ambitions, his ruthlessness dispatch of former president Sir Ketumile Masire into the wilderness, and his constant change of his Vice-Presidents were enough warnings that Ian Khama was going to be troublesome as an ex-president as much as he was as a sitting president.
This column and many other commentators were labeled prophets of doom for expressing their worry and fears that Ian Khama may not readily entertain the idea of stepping down when his term ended.
The Centre for Strategic and International Studies also weighed in, authoring a report titled ‘Botswana: Assessing Risk to Stability’, which among others, shared widespread fears that Ian Khama may refuse to step down if he was defeated at an election or when his term ended.
There's more to this story
But to keep reading, we need you to subscribe.
Investigative journalism is an indispensable part of a healthy society, but it's also expensive to produce. We are reliant on subscriptions to fund our work, and while you can enjoy most of our stories for free, a small number of premium features are reserved for subscribers.
You can subscribe for one week, a month or a full year - the choice is yours.
Save 77% on an annual subscription. Click here to find out how.
Existing subscribers can log in to keep reading here.
