Anyone who decides they want to become president must have a temperament for the hardest job in the world. The job advert for the president in Botswana, and indeed across the democratic world, is a low threshold with very little barriers to entry it would make a regular intern salivate at the prospect.
There are no layered demands for competencies, no mandatory A-list skills, nor zillion experience required. All you are required to have, is a Botswana citizenship; either by birth or descent, to be aged at least 30 years and be qualified to be a Member of Parliament - another low hanging fruit. The temperament ‘toolkit’, though, is a raised bar that seems to be the unwritten competency job advert designed by the most sought-after job recruiters and talent management strategists. No wonder the world out there still pines for temperament as a key qualification for the presidency. Temperament itself is shifting sand, the ingredients could be inelastic. How does one define temperament without running into dead ends? Save to say, one presidential candidate in the previous United States elections described their main opponent as possessing an unpresidential temperament. Possibly implying that a presidential candidate should be a ‘well adjusted’ person.
In the US Democratic Party presidential campaign of 2008, Former First Lady, Hillary Clinton, questioned the readiness of her then chief opponent, Barack Obama, whether he was prepared to put aside his interests at 3am in the dead of the night to answer a crisis call. Temperament, they say, is innate, and mainly made up of deterministic traits that make up one’s personality. Albeit the over-bearing influence of psychology in the make-up of temperance, even on the canvass of politics, there is a semblance of consensus that when a child is born, they are not born in a vacuum. There is a family, friends, schools, adolescence and other forms of socialisation and influences that bear their spell on an individual. “I have lived long enough, and I have experienced life under our past presidents. I look at the qualities that each one of them brought to the table, and I think Duma easily qualifies,” says Nomsa Gosenyaphuti. Gosenyaphuti, the Tonota resident, may have her colours fastened to the mast in this matter, but she believes she is more than qualified to weigh in. She is Boko’s first cousin. “I am a few years older than him, but we grew up together. He laughed a lot. He liked singing. He was a happy child who enjoyed the company of family members. “ Edward Boko, Duma’s uncle, is effusive when he talks about his nephew. Pushed to a corner to name the one trait that defines his nephew: “Respect”, he says. “He respects me so much he defers to me on almost everything. Even at his age and with his education he still has that pure cultural respect.’’ This runs counter to the prevailing narrative in some quarters where his nephew is caricatured as a fire spitting ideologue who would be quick to demean and up-end an opponent. The reference point is the presidential debate of 2019 where Duma used folklore hero Ratsie Setlhako’s verbiage to characterise the main resident at State House and the ruling clique as bo-magogajase and bo-nkorobwane. To the uninitiated ‘magogajase’ and ‘nkoborwane’ are linguistic carpet bombs which could be approximated to mean ‘dimwits’ or loafers. To Duma’s folks, the 2019 presidential debate was simply a normal political exchange, and politicians across the divide trade in banter and acerbic exchanges including the political poetic license. Gosenyaphuti sees her cousin as a doyen of virtues such as order and honesty. “Even in our youth he abhorred dishonesty, lies and disorder.
He is so honest, he would call out anything that smacks of dishonesty,” she recollects. They even had a nickname for him. “We called him Rra Melao. He was so fixated with doing the right thing. His sense of justice ran deep. I was not surprised when he chose to do law at university.” Zandile Boko, Duma’s aunt, talks of a young boy of a quiet demeanour who grew up to be a benefactor of all the good in her life. “He and his wife feed and care for me. He loves me dearly.” She says she was worried when Duma joined politics. “People don’t have love anymore, and it is worse in politics. ’’ The one thing that he noticed as Duma was growing up was that he was stoically patient; a virtue which she says has remained as a permanent fixture he adorns over his bones. “Even in the darkest of moments when tragedy struck, he looked the situation in the face and always gave an encouraging line; ‘Kuzolunga’,” she reminisces with a smirk on her face. Former long-term partner at law practice, Oteng Motlhala, concurs and picks the thread from Duma’s aunt. “Like any business, our law firm had its ups and downs. During such times, he showed another side of him. The unparalleled belief in a force stronger than the self, and this always came to the fore.” Motlhala believes Duma is driven by a motto that at its core is the conviction that humans are essentially born to serve others. This seems to fuel his life purpose, and he hoists this conviction on his life totem pole. What perhaps seemed to enthral Motlhala is the nonchalance with which his partner accepted certain eventualities, which he could not change. In Motlhala’s assessment, Duma seemed to have carved for himself a philosophy akin to. “If it was meant to be, it will be. If it wasn’t, laugh it off and move on with panache and swagger, more resolute and determined.” In his profession, Motlahala sieves and informs himself. Confronted with the attributes that stand out in his former partner’s life, he reckons the sharpest arrow in Duma’s quiver is self-confidence. “For me, his strong trait is his self-confidence. He has a belief in his skills and prowess as a lawyer and a leader. People generally see in others what they see in themselves. Because of his strong self-confidence and self-efficacy in the skills and abilities of all those he works with. This made it an absolute pleasure to work with him.” Shadreck Kgosi, a former military man, was Duma’s classmate at Tamocha Primary School. He remembers that Duma participated in a lot of activities including running and ball sports, and to be polite he says he was average in extra-curricular activities. What, however, stood out was his brilliance in class. “I think he led the class all the way without letting up. I knew then that he would make something big.”
Kgosi does not belabour in frills and niceties of discourse; he goes to the marrow of what he wants to put across. “He would make a better President,’’ he said about his former classmate. At the tail end ,he makes mention of a small footnote, a matter of no consequence, it would appear! “We clashed once down by the stream and fought,” he says without revealing much. With mischief in his grin, Duma states that the fight with Kgosi was the only fight he ever fought and that his record is still intact. “Did he tell you who won the fight?” Throughout his career, Duma has always fed off the stage, he had some natural unction to roar to life on the stage, like a gladiator. His parents, friends and colleagues have all described him as mainly laid-back and trading on the shy disposition in the many facets of life save for the stage. Former school mates talk of an A-star performer in the all-conquering drama group; a lucid debater who had a way with words in the feared Madiba Secondary School debating team of yesteryear. Talking of Duma’s stage persona, Motlhala says: ”His passion for law, his easy grasp of its concepts, his adventurous and bold application, coupled with his oratory skills were and remain a marvel to watch.” At what stage did he receive the belief that he could be a leader and even angle for the ultimate position in the land? Other than leadership positions that he held along the way, (SRC President, Chairperson of the Law Society, Chairperson of BONELA etc), there is an innocuous incident that juts out and looms large. A conversation he overhead! As a rookie lawyer, he had travelled by bus to attend a case in Mahalapye. Early in the morning, his client, an elderly woman who was obviously troubled had come to talk to Duma’s father about the case. She had come to bear her soul. As the adults were talking, not far from the window of the room where the young Boko was sleeping, the senior Boko, who had not seen his son in court ,was out there giving testimonials about his son. There he was assuring the anxious woman that now that the case was under his son’s care, the woman should relax because her case was as good as won.
He assured the woman that she would be set free by the courts. Steve Boko was possibly putting in a good word that every doting parent is expected to do for their children. What Duma’s father was oblivious of was that, right there in the veranda; he was not only conversing with the woman interlocutor, but he was also massively programming and drilling in his son who was this time lying awake in his bed and all the while eavesdropping on his father’s conversation. The young Boko was internally beaming with pride. He was validated in trillions of self-belief in the confidence-o-metre. It is that foremost African novelist, Nigerian Chinua Achebe, who writes that a child sent by its father to steal does not tiptoe, he kicks the door with his feet. “I chill in hellfire,’’ goes his well-known refrain plastered across his social media platforms whenever there are crises situations directed at him or his organisation. President Thomas Jefferson writing to John Adams in 1816, described himself as sanguine. “My temperament is sanguine. I steer my bark with hope in the head, leaving fear astern,” he said. The psychological definition search of a sanguine temperament aggregate to a positive and generally optimistic person even in midst of challenges and crisis. Kaone Boko, the wife of Duma Boko, gives us a peep into the head and heart of her husband. “He is a good father. I wouldn’t have chosen a better man to be the father of our kids. One thing that many people do not know about him is that he has an amazing faith. He does not draw from himself but from a source of power bigger than himself.
He is yielded and completely surrendered to God.” “Where would all this unbridled audacious faith come from?” she asked rhetorically. There are of course instances where he exasperates her. “He is far too generous. He gives even to the last thebe. You have no idea how we struggled in the aftermath of the 2019 General Election. We literally had nothing.” She relates an incident where a known sweet lady who plies the Riverwalk Mall area looking for alms, made a beeline for Duma on a day when the family needed a bail-out themselves, they were adding thebes to get some essentials. “He gave her the last P200 we had, and we had to go back home bearing nothing. I was seething! Why not give her P100 at least?” She thought to herself, reasoning that with the other P100 they could have at least managed to get bread and a few things. Over the years, she has learnt and accepted that her husband is generous to a fault. But there are great lessons, she says, which have been imparted on the family through his acts of giving. “My children give to many causes now and I now appreciate the value of giving, true giving.” What are the two top-most qualities that define her husband? To her, two attributes would not do the man justice, it must be three, at least. “This man is resilient. I have seen him defy hunger, harassment, vilification and all. He does not back down from a fight; no matter how big the enemy is.” Yes, she has seen reports of break-ups in the alliance and some skirmishes in the party and she has no clue about political going-ons. One thing she knows though is that her husband is principled to the point of stubbornness. “I don’t know if this is a good thing or bad thing,”
One time somebody remarked to her that her husband is honest, without negating this she would rather put it differently. “For me, the best descriptor is, “fair”. He is fair. He always listens to both sides. Like all fallible human beings, he would at times reach wrong conclusions, but he is fair. This about him I know. ’’ As I pack up and leave, I ask him the last question as I stride towards the door. “Can he put everything aside and answer that distress call at 3am?
“You bet,” she hollers back without flinching.
