22 Jul 2015

Today, (July 23) former president, Sir Ketumile Masire, turns 90.  Born on July 23, 1925, Sir Ketumile has had a huge impact in the development of independent Botswana and the southern African region.

He had roles as the deputy prime minister of Bechuanaland during the 1965-66 transitional period of nominal self-government; as independent Botswana’s first Vice President and Minister of Finance and Development Planning (1966-1980); the second President of Botswana (1980-1998). Pako Lebanna of BOPA looks at the life of a great African statesman.

 “Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality” American scholar and author Warren Bennis said and this aphorism has proved true in the life and servitude of Quett Ketumile Joni Masire.

From his modest upbringing in Kanye where he was born on July 23 1925, Sir Ketumile would have fate, and his own ingenuity thrusting upon him an essential role of helping lead one of the world’s poorest, least developed nations at independence to middle income stability.

Botswana now prepares to celebrate 50 years of independence in 2016, owing much to the achievements of Sir Ketumile and his generation of independence leaders including founding president Sir Seretse Khama. The country will also fulfill the ideals of the National Vision 2016, which the country adopted in 1996 under Sir Ketumile’s watch.

Yet an independent, self-sustaining Republic of Botswana seemed an illusion in the 1960s.  The country was underdeveloped even by African standards of the time. 

Botswana was characterised by lack of a modern road network, with just six kilometres of tarred road in a country the size of France, Texas or Kenya, no modern portable water or electrical facilities across the country and poor human development depicted by low literacy levels.

Sir Ketumile was raised in this socio-economic background, a time when communal subsistence farming or migrant labour in South African mines was the domain of most Batswana men. 

However, he excelled at school, first in Kanye and then at Tiger Kloof in South Africa, granting him the initial path towards leadership.

He returned home, helping found Seepapitso Secondary School in Kanye, serving as the school’s headmaster, and also becoming a noted farmer.  Sir Ketumile would also venture into journalism, as a reporter for the African Echo/Naledi ya Batswana newspaper.

He was elected to Bangwaketse Tribal Council, and thereafter the national Legislative Council (LEGCO), which met at Lobatse to pave way for independent Botswana.

In 1962, Sir Ketumile worked with the likes of Sir Seretse Khama, Moutlakgola Nwako, Goareng Mosinyi, Gaefalale Sebeso, Archeus Tsoebebe, Tsheko Tsheko, Englishman Kgabo, Ben Stienberg and Amos Dambe establishing the Botswana Democratic Party (BDP), a political entity founded on pursuing the values of consultative democracy and market-based economy.

As founding BDP secretary general, Sir Ketumile had a huge influence in the country’s initial nationwide support as he traversed the length and breadth of Botswana shoring up support for the party.  The BDP had come into being two years after Motsamai Mpho, KT Motsete, Klass Motshidisi and others founded the Botswana People’s Party (BPP), a radical Pan Africanist movement in 1960.

Mpho and company were later joined by the charismatic Phillip Matante, who assumed BPP leadership, and became the country’s first Leader of the Opposition, with the Seretse and Masire led BDP having won the pre-independence general elections.

With Matante passing away in the late 1970s, just before Masire assumed the reigns of power in 1980, the BPP became less of a factor, their electoral support waning in the 1980s and 1990s.

However, Sir Ketumile’s tenure in power saw the rise of the opposition Botswana National Front (BNF), a movement conceptualised in Dr Kenneth Koma’s seminal 1965 document, The Pamphlet No 1.

Bangwaketse royal Bathoen II joined the BNF and through his influence, Masire’s homeland, the Kanye and Ngwaketse villages became opposition strongholds, as did the urban centres, where in the 1980s and 1990s, they steadily increased support through the efforts of charismatic politicians in the likes of Paul Rantao, Maitshwarelo Dabutha, Vain Mamela, Gilson Saleshando and unionists like Johnson Motshwarakgole.

Nonetheless, the BDP remained the most popular party in the rest of the country, and Sir Ketumile was returned to power comfortably in 1984, 1989 and 1994, before retiring from active politics in 1998.  Just after Masire left office in 1998, the BNF was divided with the formation of the splinter Botswana Congress Party (BCP).

Sir Ketumile helped harness Botswana’s policy formulation towards macro-economic prudence as the founding Minister of Finance and Development Planning. Botswana enjoyed economic growth rate at par with the Asian Tigers - Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan. 

Unlike these Asian states, Botswana’s high mineral-driven economy did not develop a strong manufacturing sector despite state intervention through policies such as the Financial Assistance Programme (FAP) and Botswana Enterprise Development Unit (BEDU), among investor friendly policies.

To boost agriculture, the state intervened through programmes such as the Accelerated Rainfed Arable Programme (ARAP), Arable Lands Development Programme (ALDEP) and Services to Livestock Owners in Communal Areas (SLOCA).

Unfortunately, a combination of drought periods and outdated farming methods still meant that agriculture’s contribution to the gross domestic product (GDP) shrunk with the country relying heavily on imports for food security.

As a leader, Sir Ketumile ensured mineral wealth was harnessed for physical infrastructure and social development at a time when ‘the resource curse’ afflicted African states led by one party state ‘strongmen.’ Through kgotla meetings, consultations and Village Development Committee (VDC) participation, even the rural poor in Botswana felt a sense of ownership of the development process.

Botswana attained independence as a weak African state surrounded by hostile white minority regimes such as apartheid South Africa and South West Africa (Namibia), Rhodesia (present-day Zimbabwe), and the Portuguese-led Mozambique and Angola. 

Conflict reigned in these countries, fuelled by global ‘cold war’ dynamics of a rivalry between Western states led by the United States of America (USA) and the Eastern bloc led by the then Soviet Union.

Sir Ketumile handled these dynamics with level headed maturity, ensuring that Botswana remained a peaceful state while retaining the moral high ground of granting liberation fighters from neighbouring states refuge.

Unfortunately, this led to the occasional backlash that included the South African Defence Force raid on Gaborone on June 14 1985, which killed 12 people in the dead of night.

Incidentally, Masire played a pivotal role in the formation of the Southern African Development Coordinating Conference (SADCC, now Southen African Development Community SADC), an organization he chaired in its formative years. 

In his presidential retirement Masire served as a peace dialogue facilitator for the African Union in the Democratic Republic of Congo and for SADC in Lesotho.

A politician who was in power during a period of leaders preoccupied with dogma, Sir Ketumile chose to fulfill George Friedman’s words; “The kind of president we need has little to do with ideology and more to do with a willingness to wield power to moral ends.” Ends