Khama: The reluctant politician
Siki Motshwari Johannes | Friday March 31, 2017 16:51
Khama is a reluctant politician. He never meant to go into politics. But in 1998, at the height of Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) factional skirmishes, he allowed himself to be persuaded by former president, Festus Mogae to join politics and deputise him.
Today, Khama has spent almost 20 years in politics, half of which he served as Vice President and the balance as President. What is intriguing throughout his entire political career, is that Khama’s views, particularly for politics, remained unchanged and he never missed an opportunity to express his disdain for politics.
It would not have been much of a surprise if Khama could have cut short his participation in politics and perhaps to pursue his first love and passion - charity work. It should also be noted that Khama is the reluctant paramount chief of Bangwato although he has never sat at the Serowe kgotla, the capital of GammaNgwato, to earnestly assume the chieftaincy. Sediegeng Kgamane has been holding the fort.
Surprisingly, Khama carried on and on and now he is only 365 days away from completing his second term in office. It is at this juncture that we have to pause to reflect on the work, achievements and shortcomings of this reluctant politician during his presidency.
To set the tone for the new administration and prepare the nation for change, the newly sworn in President Khama’s 2008 inauguration speech promised in the main no fundamental departure from the tried and tested path traversed by his predecessors. “A change of leadership does not mean radical changes in the way we have been setting out our objectives as agreed upon by the ruling party and government for this nation”. That is to say just like previous ones his government was to be guided by democracy plus dignity, discipline, development and delivery.
However, he added, “In the course of the incoming administration you may detect a change in style and special emphasis on a number of issues”.
What the nation perhaps took no notice of was the reference to four little words “a change in style”. True and faithful to his words Khama’s administration broke new ground on many fronts and the new developments appear to have caught some quarters off guard. You can blame this lot for lack of attention to detail because Khama had warned that “this (change) should not cause any alarm or uncertainty”.
Pursuant to the goal of delivery, Khama immediately wanted to inject a new lease on life in the public service. He set out to address issues of under-achievement and lack of accountability on the part of the civil service. His Government attached a high premium on the performance management system (PMS) and performance based reward system (PBRS). Individual ministries now had to account for their performances to the President on a quarterly basis. The intention was to encourage ministries to up their game while outcomes of the performance review meetings could be used as a basis for determining appointments, deployments, promotions and demotions including Cabinet reshuffles.
Khama made it very clear that he would not tolerate non-performance. Emphasis on the use of PMS/PBRS was to have the unintended consequences of causing fear and panic in the civil service as job security was no longer guaranteed. In the process some unscrupulous and less productive elements in the public service now fearful of losing jobs, took refuge in sycophancy and bootlicking to secure jobs.
It came as no surprise that in his element in his own backyard, Moshupa village, Vice President Mokgweetsi Masisi announced to the world: “Ke lelope. Ke ngwana wa lelope. Ke ngwana ngwana wa lelope (I am a bootlicker. I an a child of a bootlicker. Iam a grand child of a bootlicker)”.
With a military background, where syscophancy is a norm,Khama’s leadership encouraged bootlicking and sycophancy. Infact, Khma has a proven record of rewarding those loyal to him not because they performed better than anyone but simply because of their loyalty to his regime.
Another unfortunate development was that some supervisors lacking sound management skills resorted to using Khama’s name to instil some sense of urgency on their juniors. It became the rule rather than the exception to hear various supervisors saying Khama wants this or that. The Khama name-dropping business went unabated. The situation was compounded by the fact that no authority, not least the head of the civil service, saw the need to correct this practice. This could partly be the reason that when things did not go their way, public servants directed all the flak to one target – Khama.
Khama is on record as having described himself as a hands-on leader. Indeed, he did not like to sit in the comfort of his Gaborone office, but went out to meet Batswana living in the countryside in the kgotla meetings, homes and streets. He became the President of the people who could just pop up at a home when the family is busy preparing sundowners. He greatly valued the views of ordinary folks and now and then he solicited their views on how best to take Botswana forward.
At times, the people’s President responded swiftly to appeals for development by communities. His ‘swiftness’ was not without controversy in some instances, as he tended to ignore protocols and processes. He would just announce a major policy shift at a kgotla meeting in some rural and obscure place and expect implementers of such developments to run helter-skelter in an endeavour to comply without much ado.
Khama’s Presidency has been characterised by issuance of directives, which in most cases rubbed the opposition parties and public sector trade Unions the wrong way. It tended to perpetuate the President’s populism at the expense of reality.
In his interactions, Khama is usually a man of few words and prefers to leave the rest of the talking to his ministers and other relevant departments. His kgotla meetings are designed to be short interactions- more like stop overs. The meetings became a complete departure from those of his predecessors like President Sir Ketumile Masire – an eloquent Setswana speaker who enjoyed speaking at length and elaborately at kgotla meetings. Throw in pomp and ceremony for good measure.
Everything seemed to be going right for Khama until 2011 when public servants embarked on the biggest industrial action demanding a 16% pay rise. The Khama regime could not budge as the demand was considered way beyond government affordability. What irked Khama the most was the realisation that behind the workers’ strike were opposition leaders whom he saw as wanting to gain ‘ cheap’ political mileage. Khama insisted that the economy was going through a recession and therefore double digits pay rises were unachievable. “We cannot give them what they want because we have nothing to give,” he said at the time.
The fall out between Khama and public sector trade unions saw the latter beginning to flirt openly with the opposition parties.
Taking a leaf from ANC- COSATU alliance, BOFEPUSU, a federation of public sector trade unions, started to work closely with the opposition parties, even influencing the formation of opposition coalition, the Umbrella for Democratic Change (UDC), to champion regime change.
Hitherto, attitudes have hardened between government and trade unions. Relations are so sour that more labour issues find their way to courts of law rather than being resolved through negotiations. The Bargaining Council set up to negotiate public servants’ salaries experienced a lot of hiccups and hitherto has proved to be less effective, as the Khama administration continues to disregard it and offer salary adjustments to non-unionised public servants.
Government and trade unions often trade accusations as to who really is holding back the progress of the Bargaining Council. While the two bulls fight, the workers suffer the most as salary adjustments are not effected on time.