It is understood the bank has been ordered to stop the proposed auction which had been scheduled to take place this Saturday at Chobokwane in Ghanzi district. An advertisement in local newspapers indicated last month that Masire's Chobokwane farms: number nine, number eight, number seven, number six and number 2MK, comprising farms number 5s and 5n; 2,000 head of cattle and a Massey Ferguson tractor 265 were under the hammer. However, NDB clients solutions director, Baboloki Mojalemotho has said the proposed auction has been cancelled. She did not give reasons. She denied the bank has been ordered to call off the auction. "We were never ordered to call for an auction and were never ordered to cancel it," she stated.
Mojalemotho said there are reasons why they would call off a proposed auction.However, she said, they do not discuss such information with the media. She said the matter is confidential between them and their clients. "You would not like your bank to share certain information about yourself with the media," she said.It is not clear how much the former president owes the bank. However, last week, Tshekedi Khama, the Serowe North West MP and younger brother of President Ian Khama and other Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) MPs were quoted saying the government should bail out Masire. Of late, Masire and his company, GM Five has been in the news after claims of a bail-out from mining giant, De Beers in the 1980s and 1990s. It is said De Beers hired an expatriate manager for Masire's farms and paid him P4 million in order to leave office in 1998.Reports say that in the 1980s and 1990s Masire's company was heavily indebted but De Beers stepped in to rescue the situation. The money was used to clear Masire's debts with Standard Chartered Bank, First National Bank (FNB) and National Development Bank (NDB), among others.While admitting and regretting that he got money from De Beers under controversial circumstances, Masire has denied that he was paid to leave power in 1998.On the help he got from De Beers with his farms he had this to say: "With the perfect vision of hindsight,I would not now enter into such an arrangement. Beyond the fact that it would not conform to today's more rigorous guidelines for good governance, which I fully embrace, its outcome was also an object lesson for me in the pitfalls of trying to manage a commercial farm by remote control. In the end I had to cut my losses by leasing my properties until I finally retired from public office". He referred to an old adage which says: "While good judgment comes from experience, experience is often the product of bad judgment".
