There are no layered demands for competencies, no mandatory A-list skills, nor zillion experience required. All you are required to have, is a Botswana citizenship; either by birth or descent, to be aged at least 30 years and be qualified to be a Member of Parliament - another low hanging fruit. The temperament ‘toolkit’, though, is a raised bar that seems to be the unwritten competency job advert designed by the most sought-after job recruiters and talent management strategists. No wonder the world out there still pines for temperament as a key qualification for the presidency. Temperament itself is shifting sand, the ingredients could be inelastic. How does one define temperament without running into dead ends? Save to say, one presidential candidate in the previous United States elections described their main opponent as possessing an unpresidential temperament. Possibly implying that a presidential candidate should be a ‘well adjusted’ person.
In the US Democratic Party presidential campaign of 2008, Former First Lady, Hillary Clinton, questioned the readiness of her then chief opponent, Barack Obama, whether he was prepared to put aside his interests at 3am in the dead of the night to answer a crisis call. Temperament, they say, is innate, and mainly made up of deterministic traits that make up one’s personality. Albeit the over-bearing influence of psychology in the make-up of temperance, even on the canvass of politics, there is a semblance of consensus that when a child is born, they are not born in a vacuum. There is a family, friends, schools, adolescence and other forms of socialisation and influences that bear their spell on an individual. “I have lived long enough, and I have experienced life under our past presidents. I look at the qualities that each one of them brought to the table, and I think Duma easily qualifies,” says Nomsa Gosenyaphuti. Gosenyaphuti, the Tonota resident, may have her colours fastened to the mast in this matter, but she believes she is more than qualified to weigh in. She is Boko’s first cousin. “I am a few years older than him, but we grew up together. He laughed a lot. He liked singing. He was a happy child who enjoyed the company of family members. “ Edward Boko, Duma’s uncle, is effusive when he talks about his nephew. Pushed to a corner to name the one trait that defines his nephew: “Respect”, he says. “He respects me so much he defers to me on almost everything. Even at his age and with his education he still has that pure cultural respect.’’ This runs counter to the prevailing narrative in some quarters where his nephew is caricatured as a fire spitting ideologue who would be quick to demean and up-end an opponent. The reference point is the presidential debate of 2019 where Duma used folklore hero Ratsie Setlhako’s verbiage to characterise the main resident at State House and the ruling clique as bo-magogajase and bo-nkorobwane. To the uninitiated ‘magogajase’ and ‘nkoborwane’ are linguistic carpet bombs which could be approximated to mean ‘dimwits’ or loafers. To Duma’s folks, the 2019 presidential debate was simply a normal political exchange, and politicians across the divide trade in banter and acerbic exchanges including the political poetic license. Gosenyaphuti sees her cousin as a doyen of virtues such as order and honesty. “Even in our youth he abhorred dishonesty, lies and disorder.
