Batswana should be worried how their country has been reduced to a fiefdom in which just one man decides everything. President Khama has single-mindedly ignored calls for a review of the Constitution of the Republic that makes a mockery of democracy by putting the presidency at once above the law and making the President the law unto himself.
In just four years in office, Khama has made many decisions that point to a man with a gargantuan Narcissus complex and immeasurable contempt for his people. The time was when Batswana used to be perplexed by the actions of the sense of self-importance displayed by the likes of Emperor Jean Bedel Bokassa of the Central African Republic, the military officer who at one time shot and killed little school children for not wearing his image on their uniforms. But because Batswana suddenly find themselves saddled with a president who Khama demonstrably cares only for himself, his family and his closest friends, the inherently mellow people of this laid-back country now wonder what will happen next. In just four years, sycophancy has come to motivate the behaviour and actions of men and woman who run the affairs of the state as they outdo one another in appeasing the centre of the universe on Government Enclave. It was upon such a time in the affairs of ancient Rome that Cassius told his friend, Brutus: Ceasar "doth straddle the narrow world like a Colossus, and we petty men walk under his huge legs and peep about to find ourselves dishonourable graves." While the nation's founding document may never have been perfect, it never really mattered because Batswana could never have imagined a time when someone would exploit it to ride roughshod over them. To be sure, a culture of the rule of law was established even as the basic law of the land was a potential invitation to tyranny. It was a climate of a Magna Carta where none existed because all three presidents that came before Khama - including Seretse his father - knew that far from being arbitrary, their will must be subservient to the common good. We now stand aghast as enlightenment and civilization disappear, and in their place a determined assault on civil liberties and institutions of law and order, including the Directorate on Corruption and Economic Crimes (DCEC), the Directorate of Public Prosecutions (DPP), Parliament and insidiously the judiciary.
