Initial local newspaper reports with headlines like ‘Masisi’s nephew seeks P17M retribution’; Masisi’s sister wins P500M tender war’; ‘…Masisi’s family tender wars’, seemed like the typical rumour mill in overdrive with the usual speculation that the president, his family and close associates were stripping the country naked.
Else the Namibia Daily News screamed ‘Botswana’s president goes shopping for a farm’, while the South African Daily Maverick yelled, ‘Botswana’s president Masisi buys lodges at government expense amid economic crisis’.
That was until the Minister of Finance, Honorable Peggy Serame revealed that a company owned by President Dr Masisi’s sister has been awarded 11 tenders totalling over 84 million Botswana Pula since Dr Masisi ascended to the highest office.
A recent Afrobarometer survey then added to the riddle of news about the president’s penchant for riches and his family’s wealth accumulation mystery as juicy news. Essentially, the Afrobarometer survey documents Batswana’s fears that the president and his officials are involved in grand corruption.
A series of newspaper reports that portray President Dr Masisi as an irredeemably corrupt person who snaked his way to the highest office for personal enrichment may come across as testimony to a large-scale, centrally coordinated crusade to project him as a creepy, dishonest and greedy fellow intent on emptying the national treasury.
In this context and to the uncritical mind, it would appear that the private media is on a witch-hunt to humiliate and shame President Dr Masisi and ultimately make Batswana to hate him, his family and close associates.
Admittedly, the president, his family and close associates may feel slandered by such newspaper reports and the barrage of criticism mainly because the reports put them at a disadvantage by insinuating that there is widespread abuse of office for personal gain.
We will recall that the immediate past president Dr Khama had an illustrious standoff with the private media that threatened to torpedo his roadmap forcing the leadership of Botswana Confederation of Commerce, Industry & Manpower (BOCCIM), now Business Botswana, to initiate a mediation process with a view to resolve the impasse.
Much like it is the case now, the media was determined to call out the then president to distance himself from his closest friends who were allegedly fleecing the economy with the arrogance and aggression of wounded buffalo.
At the time, those who were sympathetic to the then President Dr Khama argued that the private media was anti-Khama and was always too keen to discredit him, his family and his government at the slightest provocation.
That standoff between the then President Dr Khama and the private media amplified with more media reports on corruption allegations involving Dr Khama’s closes aides culminating with Dr Khama expressing his public contempt for the private media and accusing them of their wicked agenda to pull him down.
But Dr Khama’s authoritarian tactics such as his government’s decision to limit its advertising expenditure on private media in order to starve them and perhaps cause them to close shop and his announcement that his government would extend legal services to public officers who have been wronged by the media did little to intimidate the private media.
When President Dr Masisi assumed the reigns, he sought to address the adversarial relationship between the private media and the presidency perhaps because he reckoned that the presidency needed the media to relay government message to the masses.
Delivering his inauguration address on 1st November 2019, President Dr Masisi salutation recognized ‘members of the media fraternity’, a departure from a toxic precedent set by the former president whose public contempt for the private media was legendary.
In the same inauguration speech, President Dr Masisi highlighted his delight at the trust bestowed upon him and his government by Batswana going further to reiterate his determination to devote his time and energy to improve the lives of the citizens.
The president ended his speech by pledging to serve Batswana to the best of his abilities but most importantly to uphold the highest standards of the presidency.
Perhaps President Dr Masisi’s expressed acknowledgment of the presence of the media among other eminent personalities and professional bodies at his inauguration event was a calculated effort to patronize the private media with the hope that the media would fan-girl the presidency and therefore lack the appetite to snoop into his private life.
Whereas the president does often fit the bill of a celebrity, he remains first and foremost the nation’s torchbearer of responsible citizenship and therefore his every step, including his awful dancing skills, invite curiosity and reporting.
If the intent and objective of President Dr Masisi’s media friendly approach was to seduce the journalists, the presidency need to know that it is the duty of the media to seek truth and report it without fear of favour.
In a vibrant democracy, the private media is an invaluable arm of the government as it is duty bound to report on issues that would otherwise escape the attention of the government.
President Dr Masisi has publicly pledged to serve Batswana and uphold the highest standards of the presidency. It is the duty of the private media to ensure that the president walks his talk and to do so they have to snoop into his public life and unfortunately into his private life.
In the course of this national duty to report on the life of our president and the activities of his government aimed at improving the lives of our citizens, the media may stumble on information the presidency would have wished to conceal not so much in the interest of the nation but rather to protect his integrity.
But over and above this statutory responsibility of the media in a democracy in terms of playing its watchdog role and ensuring that the most powerful individual is accountable, there are other reasons why the media has continuously had interest in the presidency.
The president is news because of our extreme obsessional interest in him, his family and close associates and of this, the scavenging media has every reason to follow their every move public and private.
People are curious about the president, his decisions, his movements and his interactions hence he is the focal point of what is considered newsworthy. The president has abundant opportunities and resources to influence national behaviour and it is the duty of the media to ensure that his own behaviour is above reproach.
It is in this context that the media ought to report on and critically appraise the president on a regular basis lest he is left to mislead citizens, knowingly or inadvertently.
Being the most powerful, most important political figure who has to make life-changing and often times controversial decisions, citizens has a vested interest in knowing how their president is conducting business on their behalf after pledging to uphold the highest standards of the presidency.
In effect, there is huge public demand for news about the president, his family and their close associates and the media is alive to the profitability of reporting about this privileged and powerful circle of friends.
In similar ways, the president, his family and their close associates know that they are in demand for news. Unfortunately, they cannot choose what has to be reported about them and what has to be protected from disclosure to the public.
Given that news about the president, his family and their close associates sells like fat cakes and also that they have no the wherewithal to dictate to the private media in terms of what has to be shared with the public, the only defence mechanism against unfavourable coverage by the media at their disposal would be to do things transparently and within limits of the law.
The president, his family and close friends also need to rein in their appetite for a life of opulence even as they are aware that one of their own has the unlimited influence to ensure that they get whatever they want, from wherever.
In many instances, presidents may not be the immediate beneficiaries of corrupt deals involving their families and close associates but the simple fact of being closely allied to the looters through a combination of blood relation, marriage and friendship [of criminals] means that the president cannot be absolved from the underhand deals involving his circle of friends.
While the president may not determine how his family and close associates conduct their businesses, he nevertheless has a duty to protect the integrity of the presidency and this may require him to keep a distance from shoddy characters including his family members who may prefer short cuts success. In the same lines, whereas the president has every right to invest the proceeds of his sweat, he must modest remembering that he has pledged to devote his time and energy to improve the lives of our citizens.
