The latest Unity Dow’s press conference should have happened was February 10, 2022 at 1121 a.m. Its timing was Strategic Blunder 1. The PR protocols relating to rebuttals require that when a party responds to allegations, each and every one of them has to be dealt with. In her cherry-picking, Dow made Strategic Blunder 2. The France Museveni Facebook page is just another one of the many, anonymously-administered, evidence-thin and dubious pages making what some would consider unusually outlandish claims. In calling a press conference to share her feelings about her beliefs about this page, Dow elevated its status. That was Strategic Blunder 3.
There is a hard-and-fast rule in crisis management, a rule that someone who has headed one of the crisis-prone ministries should know by now. The ideal crisis response time is the first hour after a crisis occurs. Such promptness enables a party to regain control of the situation by setting the record straight and eliminating speculation that may damage its reputation. Dow failed to observe this very basic protocol and in the process, her reputation suffered serious damage.
At 1021 a.m. on February 10, 2022, the France Museveni page posted: “My Sister UNITY DOW and owner of NTEFO GUEST HOUSE, how are the regime change meetings coming along? When is the next Ntefo meeting?” It wasn’t until four days later (February 15 and many, many hours later) that Dow addressed a press conference at which she also made Strategic Blunders 2 and 3.
Even when they may be true, the sort of allegations that are posted on the France Museveni page are the kind that many, if not most, will dismiss outright as pure fiction. There is a very titillating one from across the northern border. It is about the unusually cruel punishment that Emmerson Mnangagwa (then Robert Mugabe’s feared minister of state security) allegedly meted out on Godfrey Majonga, a love rival that he caught with his mistress at a second-floor flat in Harare. Mnangagwa is supposed to have told Majonga (then a lively Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation reporter) to either jump out of the window or sit on a red-hot stove plate. He was unwilling to do either and Mnangagwa ordered his bodyguards to throw him off the balcony. Majonga suffered grave injuries and spent he spent the rest of his life in a wheelchair. This may actually have happened but not many are going to believe it did.
Dow could have exploited the page’s credibility issue to her advantage – by not saying anything and left everybody else wondering what the truth is. However, that advantage went out the window when she appeared before the press.
A day before the press conference, the admin(s) of the France Museveni page had caught wind of this and wasted no time in posting to the page: “Happy Valentine My Sister UNITY. i hear you are calling a Press Conference at AVANI tomorow to address me… i hope you will not say you are clean otherwise it will not rain but pour My Sister… In your PRESS CONFERENCE tell us about millions which went through your PRIVATE SECRETARY by then MR MARUAPULA….tell us….where was the Money coming from.”
At this point, it should have been clear to Dow that no longer would she have to deal with one allegation – of her lodge being the staging ground for a coup against President Mokgweetsi Masisi. She necessarily had to rebut this second and more damning allegation. There didn’t exist for her the option of cherry-picking issues that she was more comfortable with and leaving out those that made her uncomfortable. However, during the press conference, she denied that her lodge had hosted anti-Masisi meetings but never once dealt with the other more damning allegation. She might as well have spent her morning moping at home about her public shaming. That way, nobody would have expected her to respond to the allegations that the France Museveni page was making against her and when she showed up, she stinted on information she could share with press. Many more damning allegations, including those about large sums of money, continue to tumble out. At least one such allegation seems to confirm a story that The Botswana Gazette published when Dow was still the Minister of Education and Skills Development.
Part of Dow’s podium time was consumed by offering a theory about who or what France Museveni is. She is convinced that the page is part of an elaborate intelligence operation with devious political motive, that the Botswana Democratic Party leadership knows about this operation and that the silence of the Directorate of Intelligence Services and Security implies complicity. Everyone who has read the page has a view about who the admins might be and such view don’t stray too far from Dow’s. However, the issue of who France Museveni is and whether Dow did the things he alleges are issues that can be addressed simultaneously but separately.
Indeed, Dow has raised a very valid point about a state resource (intelligence) being weaponized against people – if you noticed most of those people are anti-Masisi. The intrigue alleged about Dow happened when she was Khama’s minister and then, was still pro-Masisi. Why is information about Dow’s alleged wrongdoing only coming out now when she is so clearly anti-Masisi? The page’s latest posts strongly suggest that Mpho Balopi, who is alleged to have trafficked voters from the Central Kalahari Game Reserve in the 2019 general election and has epically fallen out with Masisi, could be the next target.
This pattern is sending out a very clear message: if you attack Masisi, skeletons will come tumbling out of your closet. Contrary to what most believe, technology is nobody’s friend: it was possible for the Saudi Arabian crown prince to hack into the WhatsApp account of Amazon’s owner, Jeff Bezos, discover his hanky-panky and end Bezos’ marriage by leaking a lovey-dovey exchange between him and a mistress. With resources at its disposal, there is no way in the world the BDP leadership would not know who the admin(s) of the France Museveni page are.
While we seek answers to those questions, Dow should also address each and every one of the allegations that the page has levelled against her. She has seen it necessary to address an allegation made by the page and it is only proper that she addresses all other allegations, especially that some of the allegations are deeply disturbing.
There is an ironic twist to the whole saga. As everybody else, Dow has expressed keenness to know who France Museveni. By her account however, she turned down Museveni’s offer to meet up for tea. As the comment board of the pages that covered Dow’s press conference show, she would now know who France Museveni is if she had accepted this offer. Museveni gets his immense power from his anonymity – meeting him would have taken away this power. Everybody can complain about not knowing who Museveni is – Dow can’t.
Dow has put herself is in a bind. As the France Museveni page churns all sorts of damaging allegations against her, she has (way too late) rediscovered the golden quality of silence. Already she has alloyed this gold with silver by choosing to speak – which downgrades the quality of the gold. The many, many hours that have passed have breached the strategic threshold of the time frame within which to respond to a crisis. She is repeating Strategic Blunder 1. At this point, she has desperately compromised her ability to offset the other two strategic blunders that she has made.
