Africa-Press – Botswana. Veteran BDP politician and prominent businessman Dr. David Magang has launched a searing critique of Former President Mokgweetsi Masisi, accusing him of single-handedly dragging down the BDP by alienating both the electorate and party insiders. In his forthcoming book Turning Back the Clock, a treatise on the leadership of Former President Ian Khama, Magang contends that Masisi’s fall was self-inflicted. He paints him as an authoritarian leader who shunned advice, tolerated the P100bn hoax, surrounded himself with sycophants, and punished those who dared speak the truth, including highly regarded technocrats.
Veteran Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) politician and businessman Dr. David Magang has launched a searing critique of former President Mokgweetsi Masisi, accusing him of single-handedly dragging down the BDP and alienating both the electorate and party insiders.
In his soon-to-be-released book Turning Back the Clock, a treatise on the leadership of Former President Ian Khama, Magang argues that the 2024 general election defeat was not a rejection of the BDP as a party, but rather a damning indictment of Masisi’s leadership.
“Clearly, it was not the BDP that lost the elections; it was Masisi who lost BDP the elections,” Magang writes, adding that the electorate’s disenchantment was so profound that they would have voted for any other party—as long as it was not led by Masisi.
Magang contends that Masisi’s fall was self-inflicted. He paints the former president as an authoritarian leader who ignored advice, surrounded himself with sycophants, and punished those who dared speak the truth, including highly regarded technocrats.
The book also criticizes Masisi’s handling of the P100 billion theft allegations involving former President Ian Khama. Despite the Bank of Botswana denying any such theft, Magang says Masisi accepted the Directorate of Intelligence and Security Services’ claims without scrutiny, which now threatens to backfire through Khama’s pending lawsuit against the government.
Below are some extracts from the book:
On Edwin Dikoloti and Peggy Serame saga
“If the truth may be told, it was a crackbrained idea on the part of the President to sideline a candidate who had emerged victorious in the Primary Elections and replace him by the very person he had decisively defeated. In so doing, the President came across as utterly insensitive to how such a gesture might be interpreted by the electorate. Just why it could not occur to the President that his course of action amounted to imposing a candidate on the electorate and that Dikoloti’s treatment might actually serve to make him even more popular is beyond me. Common sense, it turns out, is not as common as it is punted.”
The P100bn case:
“..A case in point is DISS’s outrageous claim that up to P100 billion was purloined from the Bank of Botswana by the Ian Khama administration despite the Central Bank’s repeated denials that that was never the case. Puzzlingly, the President took this as gospel truth and as I write it is General Khama who is set to smile all the way to the bank if he is successful in his multi-million Pula suit against Government in this connection.”
Masisi Sisters and sudden tender fortunes
“All of a sudden, a couple of the President’s sisters found themselves on a Government tender winning streak. Of course as citizens, the sisters had every right to bid for business with Government, but the question was, where were they before Masisi became President? Why did they only enter the lists after their brother ascended to the presidency?”
Diplomatically reckless on Debeers
“Masisi meant well, but he was too diplomatically reckless in his rhetoric that he unwittingly sent jitters in De Beers, thereby inclining it to do everything in its power to help derail the BDP gravy train.
The President had given the nation to understand that it was a done deal, that Government was on course to receive a P1 billion diamond development and skills transfer annuity from De Deers for the next ten years, that by 2030, ODC was poised for a long-overdue entitlement to 50 percent of rough diamonds instead of the 25 percent presently in force. Sadly, it turns out De Beers had not appended its signature to the deal after all, and now that there has been a change of government and signs are that the Boko administration is determined to somehow ingratiate itself to De Beers by substantially toning down on some of the erstwhile demands the Masisi administration exacted on them, we may as well say we are back to Square One. Clearly, the President was counting chickens before they were hatched and if we were taken in by his pronouncements, we cannot be faulted.”
BDP Council of Elders ignored, mistakes multiplied
“Perhaps the greatest mistake Masisi made was to spurn periodical meetings with the BDP Council of Elders, who comprised of Festus Mogae, Ponatshego Kedikilwe, Patrick Balopi, and myself. We only met him once at the inception of his presidency and from that point on, he avoided us like the plague. Yet we were a most valuable resource in that it was to us ordinary Batswana trekked to express displeasure about aspects of the conduct of the presidency and precious other shortcomings.
If the President had cared to give us periodical audience, he would have avoided most of the glaring mistakes he made and would probably still be in power today. It is a pity that he chose to listen to only people who were only interested in telling him what he wanted to hear – cheerleaders so to say – and for that he paid a heavy price at the polls, with the party inevitably foundering with him. It has always boggled my mind why it never occurs to people in power that imbongis are more of a bane than a blessing.
Since the President was stubbornly deaf to all entreaties, he disdained collective decision-making and almost completely forgot about the supremacy of the party over the sum total of its members. The decisions of the central committee that augured well both for the party and the presidency were ignored, and despite the fact that the Chairman of the party is the Republican VP, the President, so I was given to understand, insisted that no single meeting should be held in his absence. As the General Elections loomed, the President was the only person of consequence seen on the stump as if it was he alone who mattered in wooing the electorate.”
Can the BDP turn the tide against the UDC?
“I have already made the case that the electorate had issues not with BDP as such but with its President, Masisi. Their beef was with an individual as opposed to the political entity he represented. Let us replace Masisi with a young, intelligent, eloquent, and charismatic leader, and we will have landed the ultimate trump card.
BDP’s resurgence might also be helped by the fact that UDC will not be able to live up to the grandiose promises it made to the nation when it was on the stump. The state of Government coffers just will not permit the fructification of such promises unless the Boko administration resorts to borrowing for populist purposes as opposed to productive purposes, radically pares down development expenditure, or substantially curtails spending on defence and security.
UDC must have had a rude awakening: it is much easier to grandstand when you are in the opposition than when you are sitting astride the seat of power. Thus personally, I see either BDP being voted back into office on its own in 2029 or on a joint ticket with BCP as in politics there are no permanent enemies courtesy of Boko himself.”
On Former President Festus Mogae’s choice of Khama
“..Mogae had finally let the cat out of the bag: the fundamental reason he went for Khama was because he saw in him the image and likeness of his father. I take that as shortsightedness of the worst order: potential should not be judged on the basis of one’s genetic pedigree, but on that individual’s personal merits. Imagine if we were all chosen on the strength of the name we carried; every institution on earth would be dynastic and nepotism would be the ruling impulse anywhere, with unalloyed objectivity thrown out the window.”
Equally, under Magang’s critical lens is Khama, whom he accuses of autocratic rule and of laying the groundwork for the BDP’s eventual decline.
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