No ostentation, no aloofness, no-airs, bi-partisan to a fault, generous with ideas and knowledge – a schoolteacher who taught eight subjects in school! Jack-of-all-trades, but master of none? No, he was master of the quintessential behaviour of how humans should behave to one another, brothers and sisters whether one was in high office and another was a street sweeper! He wasn’t my neighbour, his daughter, Mmasekgoa was. Whenever he visited his daughter, he would, before he departs daughter’s house, stand over the fence and shout a greeting: Dumelang Boorra-Dingake! The two of us would stand at the fence like good old neighbours, chat and exchange banalities. Though we were, politically-speaking, poles apart, we were Batswana first, brothers-in-the-nation. Now and then, I got the flak for applauding his political approaches to political challenge from the BNF young lions. I took it in my stride, convinced that I was right. I watched him break down during his speech in reaction to the signing of Nkomati Accord by President Samora Machel. “President Machel was bullied to sign!” he almost choked in his emotions as he whimpered and his voice broke down. When Die (The) Groot Krokodil (Big Crocodile)PW Botha), in self-delusion, took a chance and tried to make him sign what was intended to be a Botswana/Apartheid SA Accord, similar to Nkomati, and named by the speculative media, the ‘Limpopo Accord, ’Sir Ketumile told Botha in not so many words, ’Satan get thee behind me!’ It was the last time Botha tried his sick practical jokes on Sir Ketumile. It was most probably why he unleashed his dogs-of-war on June 14, 1985 on Gaborone, killing 12 innocents, which he alleged were ANC terrorists!
Many Batswana quaked and believed it was the end of Botswana. Not “Ra Gaone”! The late President might express feeling of temporary helplessness at the bullying and intimidation of the previously colonised African brothers, momentarily bullied by the apartheid skunk, because of its military superiority; but Sir Ketumile refused to be intimidated! He knew more than many, that the African solidarity he symbolised would eventually triumph!
