Khama's threat is baffling

Mmegi Editor | Wednesday December 4, 2013 17:02

Addressing the 35th High Level Consultative Council (HLCC) on Thursday last week, Khama took off on a tangent to say how government was concerned 'at the growing slander now being directed against members of the Executive, including senior government officials, who are subjected to personal attacks for carrying out their public duties'. As a result, the President said, government had decided that where members of government - including senior officials - were subjected to such abuse by the press, government would extend to them “appropriate” legal support.

 

While we have come to accept that nothing is strange coming from President Khama, this one must occupy a special place in the baffling world of hostility to the press by professed democrats. But it is not really bizarre because Khama recently attracted media scrutiny over construction of an airstrip by the Botswana Defence Force (BDP) on the President’s private land at Mosu Village. As was to be expected, Khama and his key defenders did everything to put a spin on the issue after they were caught off guard. But the more the spin-doctors in the Office of the President (OP) tried to turn the issue, the more they contradicted themselves.

 

Without a doubt, the Mosugate scandal has embarrassed Khama and left more than egg on his face. Exposing Mosugate and those behind the truth of it is the kind of story that the Khama administration wants suppressed and punished; not the apparent corruption. 

 

But Khama is the man who will promise people freedom of speech but will not give them freedom after speech. This is the man whose intolerance for dissent is so overwhelming that he is surrounded by men and women who muster the art of unquestioning loyalty, including self-professed lickspittles. For this reason, state media features his face every day in a monotone that is notable for its lack of debate.

 

Clearly bereft of the rudiments of democracy but loaded with archaic military drill of top-down command, the former Commander of the BDF tends to regard media scrutiny as invasion of his personal privacy. He will declare an anti-corruption crusade and proceed to personally threaten those whose sole purpose it is to expose corruption. Of course, the problem could be that Khama does not want to be disturbed while basking in the glory of praise from the likes of Transparency International (TI) who consistently rate Botswana as the least corrupt country in Africa and among the least corrupt in the world, regardless of mounting evidence to the contrary.

 

Now with the latest round of bare-knuckled threat to media freedom at the HLCC last Thursday, Khama has pronounced himself ready to abuse taxpayers' money by aiding and abetting wrongdoing. We are scared because other than the unspeakable allegations about certain things, this is the crudest that our democracy has been.

 

Today's thought

'What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist.' - Salman Rushdie