When ex-presidents throw spanners into statecraft works

In Botswana, the political disconnection with former President Ian Khama began at the advent of President Mokgweetsi Masisi’s tenure on April 1, 2018. The problem has since metamorphosed into a crisis, with Masisi’s administration disproportionately expending vast energy and resources in that fight.

Equally, some of Khama’s borderline ‘criminal and treasonous activities’ have increased, such as his recent campaigning for a trophy hunting ban law in the UK or his alleged attempt to disrupt State-to-State interaction between Botswana and Estonia. These activities are injurious to Botswana’s interests.

Zambian President Hakainde Hichilema, during his recent working visit to Kasane, expressed concern over the trending return of former presidents to partisan political activism. His predecessor, Edgar Lungu, announced his return to active politics in November last year. The latest entry of these parochial thorns on the sides of the sitting presidents is former South African president, Jacob Zuma, whose new creation is a political outfit, uMkhonto Wesizwe Party (MKP). The trio has a common quest of returning to political power either directly, as in the case of Lungu (Patriotic Front), or indirectly through proxies regarding Khama (the Botswana Patriotic Front – BPF) and Zuma. As the ‘patrons’, their goal is singular – control. Interestingly, however, the three reached their present predicaments due to varied circumstances.

For Khama, it was the end of a mandatory two-term, while Lungu lost an election to the opposition. Lungu returns on the pretext that the fractious PF needs to be united. Khama and Zuma, the ideology behind their political formations is as clear as opaque.

Their formations were clearly founded on whipping up tribal sentiments, accusing their successors of disrespecting the kgosikgolo and Bangwato in Khama’s instance and the Zulu nation for Zuma.

Unsurprisingly, the rallying cry for Khama’s followers then was ‘Eseng mo go Kgosikgolo’, emblazoned on T-shirts and other promotional paraphernalia.

These appeals to tribal emotions led to violent riots in South Africa, resulting in loss of lives and destruction of property and infrastructure after Zuma was brought before the courts on arms deal and corruption charges. He was subsequently incarcerated for contempt of court.

The long-time ruling parties in SADC are, at times, a bundle of contradictions. The case in point is the ANC in South Africa. An ANC executive committee that included Julius Malema engineered President Thabo Mbeki’s ouster and his replacement with a highly compromised Zuma on May 9, 2009. Zuma was himself forced out on February 14, 2018, following a fifth parliamentary vote of no confidence. In the ensuing race for his replacement, Zuma fielded as a proxy his ex-wife Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma against Cyril Ramaphosa, who won comfortably.

Intense media scrutiny and a report by Public Protector, Thuli Mandonsela, uncovered runaway corruption dominated by the capture of State institutions by the Gupta brothers from India. Based on that and the findings of the Zondo Commission, Zuma was forced out. In the run-up to the South African elections this year, the ANC suspended Zuma from the party in January after he publicly identified with the MKP. The question being asked in South Africa is whether the State can withdraw Zuma’s presidential perks. Given previous related cases, like in Botswana, the state is helpless.

After he was sentenced to a 15-month jail time by the Constitutional Court on contempt of court in June 2021, Zuma continued to receive his benefits. At the time, the University of Cape Town head of the department of public law, Professor Pierre de Vos, told Jacaranda FM radio station that only impeachment could strip a former president of their benefits.

“In terms of the ordinary legislation, there is no provision for someone who is no longer the president to have their benefits taken away or reduced.

Now, the legislature can change that but until it changed, it would not be permitted for the benefits of the former president to be removed because he was sentenced to 15 months in prison,” explained Vos citing Section 89 of the South African Constitution. In Zambia, Lungu was president for six years, one of which was a leftover from Michael Sata’s premature death. He started his elected term after the 2015 elections but lost to Hakainde Hichilema’s United Party for National Development (UPND) in the August 12, 2021 poll with a landslide of 2.8 million to 1.8 million votes. After initially stalling and claiming the poll was not free and fair, he was prevailed upon by other opposition leaders who had contested the election to concede defeat.

Until the 2021 elections, Hichilema had patiently tried for the presidency six times (since 2006). As opposition leader, among the indignities he suffered from various Zambian regimes, was the four-month imprisonment in maximum security jail charged with treason for failing to give way for Lungu’s presidential motorcade.

On his return to politics in November 2023, Lungu said he is “ready to fight from the front not from the rear in defence of democracy.” He is expected to be a presidential candidate for PF in the 2026 General Election. By returning to active politics, Lungu fell afoul of the Zambian law, which requires former presidents to relinquish their benefits should they choose to re-enter active politics.

Zambia’s founding president Kenneth Kaunda fell afoul of that law in 1999 after he re-entered active politics under the now-opposition, United National Independence Party UNIP. He was stripped of his benefits. They were later restored after he retired permanently from active politics, and he went on to live as a respected elder statesman in the company of the likes of Sir Ketumile Masire, Festus Mogae, Joaquin Chissano, Sam Nujoma, Hifikepunye Pohamba, Joyce Banda, Jekaya Kikwete and many others.

After Kaunda had re-entered politics, an evidently vindictive Frederick Chiluba regime through a high court judge ruled that Kaunda, who had been president earlier for 27 years, was not a Zambian citizen as his parents were born outside the country.

As is karma, some years later Chiluba himself was hounded with claims of being a Zairian after he had left the presidency! Africa’s intolerance can at times be outright diabolical and reach Trumpian hallucinations.

Not in a dissimilar fashion, a long-time model civil servant, Member of Parliament, and senior minister Pelonomi Venson-Moitoi was nearly stripped of her citizenship. Her crime? She had sought to challenge President Masisi for the ruling BDP presidency at the party’s special congress in Kang in April 2019.

Following that judicial onslaught and intimidation, during which her group’s accommodation bookings were repeatedly cancelled under dubious circumstances, Venson-Moitoi withdrew from the contest.

While in other jurisdictions like Zambia, presidential benefits can be withdrawn in violation of political activism, in Botswana, no such condition exists.

In a twist of irony, Botswana’s ex-presidential benefits were modelled along Zambia’s. At the anticipation of the retirement of Botswana’s longest-serving president (1990-1998), Masire, the country had no tailor-made benefits for ex-presidents.

Thus, a benchmarking team was dispatched to Lusaka, and on their return, a report was duly delivered to the relevant authorities.

However, the powers that be – true to their habit of putting the interests of the party above those of the nation – decided to leave out censure of political activism, as long as it benefited the government of the day. The subservience of national interest to that of the ruling party has informed the introduction of many laws in Botswana, including presidential automatic succession and the emasculation of oversight institutions and law enforcement agencies like parliamentary committees, the Ombudsman, the Directorate on Corruption and Economic Crime (DCEC), the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC), the Directorate of Intelligence and Security (DIS) and others. They were crafted for failure.

Similarly, the law on presidential benefits was done with a sitting president in mind, not for national posterity. In fact, on the eve of Khama’s departure, an intense parliamentary session that went on into the wee hours – led by then Vice President and Leader of the House, Mokgweetsi Masisi – approved an even more fattened and custom-made package for the departing Khama.

This unjustifiable largesse was vehemently opposed by the opposition bloc in Parliament, but the tyranny of the majority ruling party MPs carried the night. Once again, the “enhanced” package carried no clause barring political activism by ex-presidents.

Sardonically, the ‘party-first’ legislators of the Khama package had not imagined a situation whereby the benefits could be used to advance the opposition cause. This has come to haunt the Masisi administration as it watches helplessly in embarrassment as former President Ian Khama – complete with official vehicles and State-provided security detail – blazes into a BPF political rally to the ululations of mesmerised party faithful.

History has shown that laws that are crafted to serve the interest of an individual and the incumbent government as opposed to national interest ultimately turn on their creators, hence ‘molaakgosi o a bo a itaela’.

And as fate would have it, Khama is learning this the hard and painful way. From the day Khama left the army barracks to join civilian life as Vice President of Botswana, he was eager to establish an intelligence unit answerable to him and him alone. The initially horrified but principled members of President Mogae’s first Cabinet rejected the idea as preposterous. But he bided his time, and at the tail end of Mogae’s term, ostensibly to be in the good books with the incoming president, many ruling party MPs flocked to pass the DIS Act. Once again, it was an all-night affair in the National Assembly as the opposition tried to block the draconian piece of legislation. The law’s critics pointed out that the DIS Act, meant to address external threats, is more inward-looking and is likely to infringe on the country’s internal democratic practices.

Ironically, Khama’s adorable creation, into which he poured obscene funding, has sent him into self-imposed exile in South Africa. Those close to the man attribute the former strongman’s flight to the fear of being detained under the DIS Act. And most critically, the humiliation that goes with it. After all, his close family members and friends have already been subjected to the law’s powers of arrest, detention and release without charge. His younger brother and wife, Tshekedi and Thea Khama, Isaac Kgosi, and other acquaintances have been victims of that law. Those sources also argued that legal and “political persecution” battles are the least of Khama’s concerns as his overflowing financial war chest can take on any of those challenges in the courtroom and freedom square at any time and day.

National-inspired legislation, therefore, protects everybody, including the incumbent and former presidents. As Hichilema rightly counselled during his January working visit to Kasane, life does not end when one is not a president.

The Zambian President could have been directing his counsel to his political opponent, Lungu, but in reality, it could be to all sitting and former presidents, including Masisi and Khama.

The still work-in-progress Botswana’s constitutional review provides President Masisi with an opportunity to review those legislative pieces that were crafted to serve narrow personal and party interests into truly national interest.