Friday, February 7, 2025

The Rule of Law maxim now lies in tatters

Botswana’s adherence to the rule law is facing its lowest moment yet.

The ability of the judiciary to be independent has never been in greater doubt.

Latest events have especially cast a severe blow on the executive’s ability to hold the ship steady.

The executive has itself often resembled a rickety truss.

For now president Mokgweetsi Masisi has put on a brave face.

He is confident that Botswana is not about to drift into some abyss.

It is not bravery. It is at best, bravado.

Institutions take time to build.  And they don’t collapse overnight. They do so over time. But there is always a tipping point beyond which there is no point of return.

That is the process the president is banking on.

But for some of our institutions the tipping point is not too far away. The stress test has kind of pushed elasticity to the limit.

The Directorate on Corruption and Economic Crime is one such institution.

I still do not understand how and why Tymon Katholo agreed to come back to head DCEC.

Katholo’s first tenure at DCEC was by any measure a resounding success.

He left behind a functional institution with clear system.

People believed in the DCEC. Any criticism was directed at the Office of the President for not making DCEC fully independent and wholly accountable to Parliament.

That was a legitimate and indeed constructive criticism.

Now the focus has shifted towards the very credibility of DCEC.

People are fed up with the DCEC. Others want it disbanded. It is a cry in desperation.

Katholo is back at DCEC.

He inherits an organization totally different from the one he had left behind.

With his second coming we are yet to see if lightning can strike one place twice.

Katholo is like a football manager called on the eleventh hour to save a sinking team from relegation when the team is left with a few almost unwinnable games from really tough opponents.

Upon arrival, the manager finds that morale among his players is at the lowest. Discipline is none existent. And the change room is on auto pilot – rowdy and unruly.

In short, the incoming manager is expected to stage a miracle.

That is how Katholo must be feeling since arriving for a second time at DCEC.

Given his zest, he could still give it a shot to reinvent the DCEC. It will be a tall order,

He will be truly surprised at the people supervising him at Office of the President, a different breed from his previous time as a public officer.

The DCEC is not the only institution struggling under a burden of credibility stress test.

The judiciary too is wobbling under the same burden – possibly worse.

Since the former president suspended four judges a few years back, the institution has never been able to redeem itself.

Public trust has gone out through window and the situation is not helped by clear-cut ambitions among politicians to control it.

The future of the bench looks perilous. It might be time to change the way judges are appointed.

The way they appointed has a lot in what we are seeing.

For president Masisi every day for the last few months has brought with it chaos after another.

The situation is magnified by the fact that the president had anchored his presidency on the principle of the rule of law.

That, according to our understanding meant fighting all illegality wherever and whenever it occurred within the Republic of Botswana.

The P100 billion case and how it all turned up has put a dramatic end to all those pretensions.

It has been a dramatic turn of events.

Yesterday’s villains are now heroes.

Not only have they walked free, they are demanding back their loot and doing so with gusto.

Naturally there are serious doubts about the president’s true commitment to the rule of law – or to put it better, if ever he really was committed to it.

You know you are entering a dangerous territory the moment people start feeling nostalgic about the long gone days of Ian Khama.

With the Rule of Law axiom now dead, the president has to come up with something fresh.

Masisi cannot go on and on without a clear strategy.

More than three years into his presidency he still wants to be everything to everyone.

That is not how power works.

Power works by making choices and sticking to priorities.

He came to power on the coattails of “indigenous citizen economic empowerment” and the “rule of law.”

For both the future looks foggy at best.

Neither is anywhere near being achieved.

Citizen economic empowerment has fallen victim to the aggressive lobbying of the company that the president keeps. This is the same clan that finances the Botswana Democratic Party.

They are mainly of Asian origin, with pointedly vested interests against citizen economic empowerment and in favour of the status quo. They have always been around, but largely lurked under the shadows.

Under Masisi they have become more assertive, more demanding and publicly aggressive.

The Inclusion Bill is the maximum that this lot could tolerate.

In the end it is a badly watered down version of what the majority had expected.

The Reset seems to be going peer-shaped even before it starts.

People genuinely want to give the newly appointed Chief of Staff, Boyce Sebetela a chance.

He is perhaps the only reason why some citizens are still prepared to hold their breath. Otherwise the universal mood is that Masisi has been given more than enough chance.

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