Last week I wrote about the former ministers of Information and Broadcasting. This week the story will focus on former presidents but not necessarily how they governed. More attention will be on their sense of humour although here and there mention will be made on serious issues that characterized their leadership. When I joined the department as a cub reporter, Sir Seretse Khama was still the president. I saw his campaign style in 1974 and 1979. He campaigned at Olifants Drift in 1974 in eastern Kgatleng.
The area is right along the border with South Africa. The visit to the area was not announced on the radio in advance. Even the department’s publicity vehicles did not go to the area to alert people of the impeding visit by the head of state. Again, for no apparent reasons, senior reporters in Gaborone did not cover the meeting except the radio station. I was based in Mochudi. However I covered the meeting. I did not ask why the meeting was not given advance publicity on the radio. I concluded that it could be something to do with the security of the president because the area was and still is right on the border with South Africa which was a hostile neighbor at the time. From the kgotla to the border line, you only needed a marksman with a30-0-6 rifle to hit the target. The president spoke about South Africans without naming them. He referred to them as “ba ba kafa ba” (those across). The next meeting that I attended was during the 1979 general elections when I was based in Mahalapye. That was when I began to enjoy listening to him. He was an orator. He was a very good public speaker both at the international and domestic scenes. He was gifted. The entourage spent the night at his farm at Seleka where he slaughtered an ox for them. It was shot by members of the Botswana Defence Force with ammunition of war.
The closest I have been next to him was in 1979 when we played a friendly game against a visiting Russian outfit at the National Stadium. I forget the name of the team but we were told that the name meant Torch in English. The team was the champions in Russia that year. They were here to cement sporting links between Botswana and Russia. Sir Seretse came to greet us before kick-off and joked about Bakgatla saying he had not been aware that there were good players among Bakgatla. When he died in 1980, Sir Ketumile Maisre succeeded. He too turned out to be man of the people. For the first few months he seemed forgetful about his new role as his security detail worked hard to make him aware that his life was in their hands. Out there in the rural areas he could be seen rushing out to catch up with people he knew with a view of greeting them without giving his security a chance to clear space for him first. He could be heard shouting, “heelang emang foo”!
When I started covering him locally and I abroad, I found out that he enjoyed talking to media people informally on official and unofficial issues. He used to call at my hotel room saying “ke tsile go itisa”. I would then phone the likes of Bashi Iketseng who was the chief of protocol and a few others to come and stay with us. Masire was very cautious on public spending. There was a time when meetings of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) could not raise quorum because of several reasons among them, the admission of Western Sahara”s Polisario Front and other issues. Successive OAU summits were then shifted to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Concerned with the national purse, Sir Ketumile preferred small delegation which would be accommodated by an 8-seater aircraft while his counterparts elsewhere in Africa used Boeing 747s. The other day I and Bishy Mmusi were waiting for him to arrive at Bole Airport in Addis. When his aircraft appeared in the skies of the airport and was ordered to remain there for a while to allow bigger ones to land first, journalists covering arrivals paid no attention to him. Some were discouraged by the size of his aircraft saying it was like a dove. Others kept asking “who this guy is” when he disembarked from the small aircraft. Their utterances annoyed Bishy.
He realized that the comments were meant to look down upon certain countries. He wasted no time by telling them that the person disembarking from the aircraft they said was the size of dove “is not a guy”. He is His Excellency the President of the Republic of Botswana. He is Quett Ketumile Masire. He is the president of the only country in Africa which holds free and credible elections every five years. He is the president of the only country in Africa which is multiparty democracy` and is the president of the only country in Africa with clean human rights record”. Nobody responded. The following year, I was again in Addis Ababa for organization’s summit meeting. I think that time I was with Moreri Gabakgore but I am not sure. He is the one I travelled with most of the time. Mogolori Modise, the president’s private secretary had left his passport in Gaborone and was very careful to move fast to avoid delays which would end up with the delegation being searched. Minutes after Masire’s motorcade had passed, Egyptian President, Hosni Mubarak’s motorcade hit the road from the airport to the hotel.
In between, it was ambushed by armed men who fired several shots but missing the fast moving Mubarak’s vehicle. That was an attempt on his life. The men were said to have fled into neighboring Sudan. Outside conference centre, the Ethiopian Police formed a human wall between journalists and the conference hall. After a long wait with no clue as to what was happening inside the hall, Masire emerged from the hall. He spotted me among a galaxy of waiting journalists. He broke through the wall of the Ethiopian Police to brief me on the issues being discussed. When he was done, he left to his hotel room at Gion Lalibela. Journalists who had been watching as he briefed me, were very surprised by the simplicity and accessibility they saw from him. One was a journalist from Niger who could not properly pronounce Quett Masire. He pronounced Quett as “Cat’ and Masire as Masiye. He asked, “Cat Masiye”, what kind of president is he? Only two police officers around him, is this how your democracy works”? The journalist was so impressed that he even confessed to me that he had never shaken a hand with his president. Masire had his hand on my shoulders as we spoke. That surprised many of the journalists who watched from a distance. Some came closer but the briefing was in Setswana to ensure that they did not benefit from it.
Masire was a real man of the people. Concerning public speaking, he was very good on the domestic font where he shone more than at the international level. If you wanted to enjoy him, you better wait for question time at the kgotlas and hear how he answered. The first time I heard him was in Mochudi when he was still the vice president. He had gone there to address Bakgatla on the Botswana Meat Commission asking them to sell their cattle to the commission. In doing so, he had said they would in turn receive yearly bonus. A man stood up during questions complaining that the issue of bonus seemed good but the unfortunate thing about it was that it seemed it had been reserved for Bangwato and Bangwaketse because they were represented in government. The man said they in Kgatleng only received “agterskot” from the BMC. It was his wish that bonus payments could be availed to them as well. The word “Agterskot” is Afrikaans for bonus.
When he responded to that Masire made it very simple to the Bakgatla. He said , “agterskot is bonus and bonus is agterskot in the same way as they speak of esele in Serowe and tonki in Molepolole”. Sir Seretse used to praise Masire saying he explained BDP programmes to the people in the language they understood. The other day, Masire was in the island of Lankawi in Malaysia for the Smart Partnership dialogue. A female singer was brought in to entertain guests. As she continued singing the famous “Killing me softly with his song” she stopped in front of Sir Ketumile with legs astride. She lifted her right leg in a position which would make the eyes of the president reach the deep end of her high. Suddenly Simon Moilwa commended “oh, no! This is provocation, this is provocation.” The following morning Sir Ketumile said to those members of his entourage who did not attended the evening session, “heelang…re letse re bone monyana wa kgeleke.” He left it to those who were present to explain details.
When Festus Mogae entered the political scene and became Minister of Finance and Development Planning, little did we know that the new man was a story teller and joke cracker. We got to know of this other side of his life as he carried on with his political duties. The other day, we were being treated for luncheon at a country somewhere in the Far East. Just when we were finished with the first course and were about to go for the main, he murmured to me saying “monna kana mono go re o seka wa imphitlhela o jele mpya ke go re o seka wa ja nama ( Mr. in this country for you to ensure that you never ate dog meet is if you can avoid meeting). It was an innocent joke but it resulted with me eating fish, chicken and vegetables in a bid to avoiding dog meat. During a visit to the Sears Tower in Chicago in 1990, Mogae told a story of how the Empire State Building in New York ruled the world as the tallest in the world. At the time of the visit to the Sears Tower, it was the tallest with 108- story. It had dethroned the Empire State Building and took its place at the top.
Standing at the last story, one is able to view the whole of northern Canada with the help of binoculars. There was little difference between the two on matters of public spending. Mogae also imposed minimum spending by public officers when touring. He demanded the sharing of resources by government departments and ministries. He cracked another joke on July 1990 in Maastricht, Netherlands where the Botswana delegation was attending a conference on Africa. It was called the Global Coalition for Africa and was co-chaired by Sir Ketumile, former president of World Bank, Robert McNamara and Netherlands Minister for Overseas Development, Jan Pronk. The Botswana delegation including Sir Ketumile was resting in a waiting room when Mogae kept staring at me. Suddenly he was heard quipping, “watch ya gago e ntle jang ne monna? My response was “I bought it in Washington DC” to which he charged, “Bakgatla le bone ba itse Washington DC?” Then the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Dr. Gaositwe Chiepe chipped in, Bakgatla ga e sa le Kgosi ya bone e nna kwa Washington DC ba tsaya gore Washington DC ke kwa Phaphane kgotsa Mosanteng”.
Again I responded, not only that, even our heir apparent was born in Washington DC’. “Kgabo a e palame setlhare e je borekhu” cheered Sir Ketumile from his seat. General Ian Seretse Khama succeeded Mogae as president. Every time that I watched him, he appeared serious.
