Africa-Press – Botswana. The least amount of money that an E2 post in the civil service will earn you a month is P38 000. At least in the telling of the new Botswana Patriotic Front, Mephato Reatile, successfully auditioning for such post requires no more than hurling insults at former president Ian Khama.
“Doing so is a qualification higher than Oxford education,” said Reatile, referring to the prestigious Oxford University where two Batswana presidents (Sir Seretse Khama and Festus Mogae) studied. “You will get a job at the Office of the President and be paid at the E band, bypassing the D band.”
As a politician, Reatile trafficks in hyperbole and those eyeing an E2 post at OP will certainly have to do a lot more than make Khama a target and may even have to get Oxford education. However, the Jwaneng-Mabutsane MP raised a valid point about a relatively new phenomenon in Botswana’s politics in which leaders (including elderly ones) are insulted. As former president and commander of the army, supreme traditional leader of the Bangwato and mostly importantly, an elderly people, Khama should never be the target of insults from anyone. Tragically though, some of Khama’s political opponents, some of them children born yesterday, have hurled insults at him in order to curry favour with the powers-that-be.
Ironically though, Reatile glossed over one crucial fact – that it was during Khama’s presidency that the conduct that he complained about actually took root. It was also during this presidency that a ruling party political operative with little to his name than a foul mouth got to walk the corridors of executive power at OP. As ironic is that, across the political spectrum, a good many operatives are elevated for insulting political opponents.
Khama himself has featured at political rallies where insults were hurled at opponents and the most infamous example is a Botswana Democratic Party rally in Maun in that targetted then Maun West MP and Batawana kgosi, Tawana Moremi. Speaking at the rally, Khama said that Tawana – who also happens to be his blood relative, had defaulted on his financial responsibilities to his family as a husband and father and that as a result, he (Khama) had taken over such responsibility on his behalf.
The Maun rally was also the nation’s introduction to Alec Seametso, a BDP firebrand from Kanye. As Khama, Seametso attacked Tawana viciously, saying at one point that he frittered away money loaned to him by the Citizen Entrepreneurial Development Agency on alcohol. These and other charges touched a collective raw nerve in the country, especially in Maun where Tawana’s cultural age-regiment demanded the convening of a public meeting at the kgotla to register their displeasure about the treatment of their kgosi. Digging into Seametso’s past, Mmegi found that this former choirmaster had perfected the art of the freedom-square insult in the Botswana National Front before he joined the BDP. The article detailing his history was headlined “Seametso: Khama’s attack dog.”
Seametso’s star shone even brighter after he and Khama insulted Tawana. Shortly after the Maun rally, it was reported that, as the BDP’s national campaign manager, he attended cabinet meetings, which were chaired by then President Khama at the Office of the President. After the elections, he became the Chairperson of the Southern District Council – which is the most senior political position in the Council.
Taking stock of the situation, a member of the BDP young wing was quoted in the press as saying that “Masire should shut up!” shortly thereafter. As one too many Batswana, former president Sir Ketumile Masire had expressed disquiet about Khama’s style of leadership. At a personal level, he had watched helplessly as what he had painstakingly built over decades be dismantled in a much shorter period of time. The public statement shutting Masire up was not designed to express genuine outrage about what the former president had said but to impress the powers-that-be.
In the BNF, Seametso’s old party, there has emerged a social media army called Fear Fokol (which models its political conduct after that of Julius Malema, the foul-mouthed South African opposition politician) and uses crude insults to defend a leadership that has never once called it to order.
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