He was that rare head of state whose superior brainpower did not trump his democratic credentials. He was therefore an intellectual democrat in a continent where many highly learned men and women have risen to power and spectacularly failed the democratic test. It is not in doubt that Mogae was a man of high brainpower even before he became president in 1998. He was a very learned man with vast professional experience in various settings and organisations. Yet these did not make him drunk with a sense of self-importance when he got ultimate power in a country which started from a very low educational base. Neither did he exhibit many signs of intellectual arrogance when he was president. By the time he came to power in 1998, he was the best-educated president of Botswana.
So far, Botswana’s presidential leadership may be divided into two distinct categories. First is the enlightened group of founding fathers, Sir Seretse Khama, his successor, Sir Ketumile Masire and then Mogae. These were benevolent, wise men who largely respected political traditions and state institutions. They valued consultation and were slow in deploying state institutions as weapons of terror. Neither did they seek to crush their opponents to the finish. They were rarely mesmerised by the trappings of power and cut their opponents a lot of slack. Mogae was even derided as weak or cowardly for avoiding head-on political confrontations.
