Going back to 2011, Julius Malema, the rabble-rousing president of the Economic Freedom Fighters, has always expressed disquiet about the Thebephatshwa Air Base west of Molepolole. As a matter of fact, his expulsion from the African National Congress (ANC) was a direct result of a statement he had made relating to it.
According to Malema, Thebephatshwa is owned by the United States government and poses a threat to the SADC region. To remove that threat, he announced plans to establish a “Botswana command team” that would help oust the “puppet regime” of then President Ian Khama and replace it with one that would dismantle the base and expel Americans. This could well have been an idle threat but Malema’s popularity in Botswana among chaos-minded youth is such that had he can turn the country upside. The result was that he was expelled from the ANC and went on to form EFF – whose platforms he continues to use to attack Botswana over Thebephatshwa.
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