This point has been proven many times over the years throughout the Southern African region. The urge to play a godfather to whoever succeed them is driven by the need to protect their loot and business interests, unpopular policies they introduced or are outright control freaks.
Cases where an outgoing president unilaterally handpicks a successor, without the consent of other party leaders or better still the general party membership has proven to be fraught with dangerous pitfalls.
Examples of this can be cited from Zambia, Malawi, Namibia, and Angola. The only difference with Botswana is that in those countries, the situation was resolved expeditiously and that afforded the incoming president an opportunity to concentrate on the job at hand. The crises were better managed.
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