Import of the state of the nation address!
Michael Dingake | Tuesday February 7, 2017 16:14
Mma V, my comrade from the days when the Botswana Orientation Centre helped expatriate Aid workers acclimatise to the new Botswana environment. Charming lady, Mma V whatever the warts she spots on her derring-do face. We aren’t comrades due to the same party membership, where members call each other ‘comrade,’ we are comrades because both of us are familiar with international relations and we’ve both served our neighbours - South Africans. Me, helped them attain freedom; she, by holding them by hand fresh from the bush, to help them learn the ABC of civil government, learning to walk in the path of black emancipation.
When we met in Cape Town, not by appointment, while I was visiting my former home of 15 years, she informed me she was serving notice and preparing to return to Botswana the following year to muddy her hands in local politics. I congratulated her patriotism and good neigbourliness, traits we evidently shared. The traits shouldn’t make one less patriotic or unpatriotic! The cement of patriotism runs deep and concretises our comradeship. When we meet in the streets of Gaborone or the winding dusty footpaths of villages, we salute each other with smile and ‘Hi comrade!’ Domkrag or Kganetso can go hang, we are Batswana first, party colours, last!
When I learnt she had thrown in her hat in the AUC chairmanship contest, I didn’t express my good wishes publicly, not because I was unenthusiastic, jealous or indifferent to her ambition; no, her ambition was my ambition, the nation not excluded; but because I foresaw the impediments placed in her way to triumph. Those who predicted she would win, the media and commentators, were insincere, not frank, their tongues in their cheeks, displaying false courtesy or pretending to be friends. I hesitated to express my thought on Mma V’s adventure. There were too many minds pulling her hither and thither and it would be best to allow her to make her own mind. Emerson avers, “Now, that is the wisdom of a man/woman, in every instance of his/her labour, to hitch his/her wagon to a star. And see his/her chore done by the gods themselves.”
But we must look back not in anger, but in sober reflection. Putting the gods aside, ‘what chances did our candidate have, unsupported by the Big man?’ Pretty little, I venture to say.
The apology my comrade Minister Venson Moitoi gives for President Khama’s absence from the AU Summit, when she needed a shoulder to cry on, smacks of suicidal sycophancy: My President right or wrong? Someone has said, “Our country! In her intercourse with foreign nations, may she always be in the right; but our country, right or wrong!” That expresses patriotism, the love for one’s country; but may she always be in the right! Two elements in the expression. First, the prayer that one’s country may always be in the right. Second, that whether right or wrong, one’s country is always one’s country. None in his/her salutary mind can say that of a president! If a president is right, good. If wrong, too bad, we can elect another president, he isn’t indispensable; very few Batswana have an alternative country.
It isn’t wrong to tell President Khama, he blunders when he blunders. It’s patriotic to do so. Khama too, has a duty to put Botswana on the map, to show he loves his country! Khama scoffs at other leaders. He thinks summit meetings of heads of states are talk-shops. UN and AU talk-shops? Batswana don’t think so. They consider the organisations to be vital for proper international relations, human understanding and human instinct.
That’s why they are members and always shall be! “No man is an island entire of itself!” according to Donne. Respect others to earn their respect. ‘Shining example of democracy,’ ‘least corrupt country in Africa,’ false labels don’t give Botswana and Batswana a license for pomposity; pompous behaviour begets retaliation in kind. Batswana across the political spectrum aren’t amused by a president who scorns allegiance to a body his country is a member, president who refuses, implicitly, to wave the flag when one of her own runs in a race! Khama ought to know as president he owes a duty to Batswana; if called upon to dance nude before international organisations pursuant of national aspirations, he must dump his ego suit to don the national interest one.
Maverick isolationist piece, we scorn! Talented Batswana, wish to leave footprints on the world scene, they shouldn’t be denied or sabotaged, but encouraged, materially, morally and spiritually. So supported, they shall enhance and magnify the country’s image, making her taller than what the tape may indicate. A glorious international status will forever be denied us, if the opportunity to rise and shine is stunted by leadership that wears egotism on its shirt sleeves.
Nobody believes the jaded theory of a president forever prisoner of a busy schedule; show me a ‘loafer’ president, I’ll show you a dummy president. Of course we’ve the Trumps of this world, good at signing Executive orders divorced from public interest.
Khama one of those?