H.E. the Entertainer

Editor | Sunday May 26, 2013 00:00

Just over the weekend, he was in Selebi-Phikwe doing what he does best - making the crowds laugh by attacking opposition parties and the private press.

Remember this is a President who has never engaged the private press face to face and one who avoids press conferences like the plague. This is a man who thinks nothing of attacking other heads of state at political rallies and, though he won't touch a native journalist with a long pole, will issue media statements to gloat about something or other. But the same man will not attend the African Union Summit or United Nations General Assembly to address the world on any matter.

Indeed, President Khama is an intriguing man in that when he was called to debate with opposition leaders on Btv in the run-up to the 2009 general elections, he 'condescended.' Of course, that was because he knew his limitations on important issues with regard to governance and leadership, let alone economics and public administration.

 We appreciate why he has chosen the route of political rallies to attack those who hold views different from his: those who cannot hold their own in rigorous debate know that it is easier to preach to the converted and overzealous who are ready to do their master's bidding. President Khama knows that underneath those red marquee tents, anything he says will be met with unquestioning cheers and ululations and the same barren show broadcast live as news on Btv. But the point is that we in the private press are active chroniclers of history and are not troubled by the names the President chooses to call us. We record, as we do now here, how President Khama - alongside his cousins and cronies - are blighting a country once full of promise for what was Africa's most troubled region. We saw him on Btv the other day as he read from the Bible on the occasion of the 40th Anniversary of the Anglican Church in Botswana and are grateful to God that he did not use it as an occasion to bash non-Christians and non-Domkrags.  

At any rate, we still urge the President to engage the opposition and call on him to revive the All Party Conference. We do this because, although his inaugural speech as President had a decidedly hollow ring, he did say that he would not depart from the tradition established by his predecessors. A return to the AU and the UN would re-affirm him as an African and Botswana as a member of the comity of nations committed to world peace, that being the ultimate goal of the two august institutions.

We worry that keeping a distance and occasionally hurling insults at the opposition and the press bodes ill for Botswana intelligentsia, anti-intellectualism having been the hallmark of dictators in the Africa that both the AU and the UN are struggling to put behind us.

                                                            Today's thought'Intelligentsia cannot teach capitalists about management, politicians about diplomacy, or scientists about their subjects.'

                                                               - Obadiah