Khama�s �happiest hour�
Staff Writer | Friday November 17, 2017 11:44
He has every reason to be happy because, finally, his counterpart Robert Mugabe’s fate lies in the hands of the military and he is going to step down.
As a new President in 2008, after a decade as Vice President, Khama watched Zimbabwe degenerate into the verge of becoming a failed state with very little to do to reverse the tide except to scream to whoever would care to listen. When the region was silent in 2008 after Mugabe lost the presidential elections to Morgan Tsvangirai of Movement for Democratic Change, and a re-run marred by state sponsored violence, Khama broke the silence and said Botswana will not recognise Mugabe as a legitimate President of Zimbabwe. Tsvangirai abstained from the election re-run at the last minute citing violence and intimidation of his supporters.
The SADC region later intervened and called for the two to form a government of national unity with Tsvangirai as the Prime Minister. Reports indicate that Khama was a young boy when he and his father, the founding President Sir Seretse Khama, visited President Mugabe in 1980 immediately after the Zimbabwean independence. At the end of his tenure as Chairperson of SADC, Mugabe shared his recollection of events that accompanied founding SADC chairperson, Seretse Khama’s marriage of Ruth Williams in September 1948.
“It was from Botswana that we got our inspiration in the Frontline States, but unfortunately some of the leaders are now dearly departed. I was glad that your father saw our independence and when he wanted to visit, I said ‘fine come’. He (Seretse Khama) wanted to see this Rhodesia, which together with South Africa was angry when he married a white mother. He was trained and prepared to take over the royal chieftainship but like a young man, when he fell in love, the sin he committed was that it was a white woman. You don’t know the war that was waged by whites in South Africa and Rhodesians. ‘It’s an offence against the natural, no, no, no!’ They all said he was a bad example to the rest of Africa. A bad example just to marry a white woman!” Later in 2016, Khama had an interview with Reuters News Agency and said Mugabe should step down and that he is too old to lead. The two countries have had serious exchanges over the years and as recent as last week, Khama posted on social media after the sacking of Vice President Emerson Mnangagwa that “another Vice President has lost a job because of a fall from Grace”.