Career diplomats are a dying breed.
The stacking of the diplomatic service with well known politicians has no doubt tilted the balance of power against career diplomats.
Politics has become a crowded field. And of the politicians are looking elsewhere for employment.
Politicians – many of them failed and others simply tired of the grill have successfully lobbied to be appointed as diplomats.
This has meant a high number of career diplomats are being crowded out – especially in those capitals considered as high prizes within the diplomatic circles; Washington, London, Tokyo, New York, Pretoria, Brussels, Berlin, Geneva and increasingly Beijing.
Across the length and breath of Botswana’s diplomatic service, the old and familiar furniture is fast disappearing.
Those old faces are sadly being replaced not by the people they trained, but by a different cadre mainly from politics.
The shift is having unintended consequences in not just strategy and tactics, but also the very texture of the diplomatic service.
The president like some of his ministers is clearly finding it much more palatable to give more power to politicians.
He is using his power abroad to relieve himself of the pressure at home.
This is tilting power in favour of politics and against diplomacy.
If a right balance is not struck, Botswana’s foreign service will become weak and vulnerable.
As of now our diplomatic corps is heavily loaded with political placemen.
Several career diplomats have had to be recalled, with no clear plan what their roles would be once back at base.
They are now warming benches at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs while politicians that replaced them have their feet in the waters across the beaches of the world.
Career diplomats feel unwanted and isolated as they find themselves in limbo – literally on no man’s land. Will they be making a comeback any time soon?
Nobody is holding their breath.
Appointing politicians to diplomatic posts is a political pressure every incoming president has to contend with.
It is how they deal with it that matters.
The current model of stacking the service with placemen is more dictated by political exigencies than by any discernible foreign policy imperatives.
More pointedly, it has highlighted the innate vulnerabilities in the country’s ability to fight for its interests abroad.
Covid-19 and the diplomacy surrounding the vaccine have laid all that bare.
This week the United States government donated large amounts of vaccine to a list of African countries.
Not so long ago, Botswana would have been top of that list.
It did not make it to that list. This much will not be lost to Botswana’s career diplomats.
Today foreign policy is nothing if it does not promote trade and economic development.
Because of economic turmoil created by covid-19, vaccine is today the biggest political and diplomatic capital.
In this era of vaccine diplomacy, Botswana has been strikingly left in the cold.
There is no doubt that Botswana under Masisi has pivoted towards China. There is nothing wrong with that. It is a choice made by the diplomat in chief.
But that choice should never have been at the expense of time tested friendships especially from countries that share Botswana’s democratic ideals of freedom and civil liberties.
A foreign policy driven by career diplomats would have foreseen the pitfalls. This is because they are much more technically equipped than politicians that are today at the helm.
Botswana’s foreign policy is today struggling for articulation.
The diplomats have few tools at their disposal. The depth is also lacking.
The diplomatic lustre from yesteryear is no longer there.
Not only that.
Its also difficult to pin down the exact identity of Botswana’s foreign policy – whether its fish or fowl.
The upshot of it all is that we have a foreign service leadership – basically politicians at heart -who are struggling to keep up in the face of a fast changing world.
The president is the diplomat in chief. And it is easy for a president to seize the foreign policy and use it as a signature of their whims.
But at a time when the economy is fraying and the country has been devastated by covid-19, that is a luxury any president can ill-afford. The president should go for safety first.
Every politician fancies themselves a diplomat of some kind.
That for me is fantasy.
The best diplomats are people steeped in military and security doctrine.
Their nerves do not fray under pressure. They are focused. And always have the bigger picture on site.
The pressure is especially high for the current president because he has to buy and reward loyalty as a result of the polarized relations with his powerful predecessor.
The current president has been especially vulnerable including to subtle blackmail from members of his own circle.
President Mokgweetsi Masisi has elected to make foreign policy the linchpin of his presidency, with China being the main pivot.
It is a decision that could not have gone unnoticed across the capitals of the west.
And they are responding in kind. Assistance, especially in vaccine has been redirected elsewhere.
Botswana diplomats in these places are struggling to get a hearing, which is according to some of them proving uncomfortable.
Appointments of politicians to foreign service is nothing new. Such appointments are as old as the Republic itself. Seretse Khama appointed professor ZK Mathews to New York, perhaps as an acknowledgement of his superior intellect than anything else.
During Sir Ketumile Masire’s tenure and also during Festus Mogae’s the late GUS Matlhabaphiri famously straddled and dabbled the political and diplomatic worlds with astonishing ease.
History is replete with such examples.
Masisi has been denied any use of low hanging fruit to entrench himself.
He has had to dig deeper to used patronage and largesse to sustain a presidency that is struggling against covid.
His situation has been made worse by a trust deficit that all stems from a growing public conviction that he deliberately allows dishonesty and mischief making to find root throughout his government communication system.
But truth be said, the high number of politicians now working as Botswana’s diplomats abroad has kind of tilted the balance of power away from true diplomacy to political convenience.
And there is a price to pay for this.
