The Political Gods Must Be Crazy: How Masisi’s Ian Khama Obsession Led to the Defeat of Oldest Ruling Party
By @mwenemavinga on X
In Botswana, the hunter is on his way to becoming the hunted.
For the majority of his over six years in office, lame-duck President Mokgweetsi Masisi has haughtily spoken about and down to former President Ian Khama—his former mentor and Southern African political royalty—using state power to harass and intimidate him.
Masisi orchestrated a campaign to investigate and implicate Khama in alleged misconduct, deploying national security agencies and legal bodies to tarnish his reputation.
Finally, Masisi hounded him out of both the nation into exile and the Botswana Democratic Party (BDP), the party Khama’s father, Sir Seretse Khama, the first president of Botswana, founded. At times mocking him, as if he were a common petty criminal, for leaving the county.
Masisi is himself the son of an independence-era party loyalist and long-serving minister in the elder Khama’s government.
As Masisi contemplates the ignominy of presiding over the first electoral defeat since Botswana’s independence for the party he and Khama were born and grew up in , I am struck by the amount of personal prestige and authority he has invested in going after Ian Khama.
That his pursuit was personal is clearly evident. In so obsessively seeking to destroy Ian Khama, he was tragically and thoroughly laying the path for his own political self-destruction and that of the political legacy he inherited.
In trying to understand what drove him to this end, I’m reminded of the classic South African comedic tragedy, The Gods Must Be Crazy. Ian Khama is Masisi’s Coca-Cola bottle—the man who made him politically, who he wanted to emulate.
But somewhere in the learning process, emulation slid into envy, and so the very existence of Khama within Botswana’s politics, like the Coca-Cola bottle among Xi’s Kalahari community, became a source of discord.
In seeking to destroy Khama, Masisi was ultimately crafting his own path to self-destruction. By the time Khama was thrown over the proverbial cliff
But somewhere in the learning process, emulation slid into envy, and so the very existence of Khama within Botswana’s politics, like the Coca-Cola bottle among Xi’s Kalahari San hunter-gatherer community, became a source of discord.
In seeking to destroy Khama, Masisi was ultimately crafting his own path to self-destruction. By the time Khama was thrown over the proverbial cliff and forced to flee Botswana, the job was done. Masisi had gone politically mad, losing touch with the political reality in Botswana.
The politics of scapegoating leave little room for sympathy toward the deflector when, after the drama, vitriol, and sacrifice, the people see no tangible improvement.
Soon enough, they begin to view Masisi as a madman and seek a sober leader who can objectively assess their concerns.
Enter Duma Boko and his Umbrella for Democratic Change, who are on the verge of securing the most dramatic and significant electoral victory for an opposition party in African democratic history.
Botswana, one of the most stable and per-capita richest countries in Africa, has been an upper-middle-income economy since 2004. For over a decade, its people have awaited a leader who can transform their small but organized and resource-wealthy nation into a true high-income economy, focusing on the development of human capital, technology, and media—looking to nations like Singapore, the UAE, and Qatar for inspiration.
In Duma Boko, Batswana will finally have a leader who can refocus priorities on advancing the nation’s interests.
Meanwhile, Masisi’s ill-tempered actions won’t likely be forgotten and may soon face scrutiny.
So, to the question of how he lost this election, my answer would be: when his envy caused him to lose his mind.