The ManicaPost
Tafara Shumba Post Correspondent
BOTSWANA President, Mr Ian Khama’s bizarre call for President Mugabe to step down, evidently shows that there are some sinister forces behind him.
Mr Khama might not know what he is doing and this might be the reason why President Mugabe has not been responding to the needless gobbledygook. When a person is possessed by an evil spirit, he is not conscious of his actions and will not even remember anything when the demon is eventually cast out.
Interestingly, you usually hear those who cast out the demon shouting out: “Buda satan, phuma satan” (go away devil). They do not rebuke the human element, but the devil behind the scenes.
The devil behind Mr Khama must be exorcised. Get this right, it is not that Mr Khama obsessively loathes President Mugabe. He is only a willing tool being fronted by the United States of America in its regime change project in Zimbabwe and other African States.
The US wants to put an African voice in their project under the false belief that it would get traction. It is the US which wants President Mugabe to retire, but it knows for sure that nobody will take notice if that voice came from the White House.
They have been singing the same hackneyed song since 2000. Now that they have put their words in Mr Khama’s mouth, they will try to tell the whole world that even President Mugabe’s fellow African leaders are calling for his departure.
However, the US cannot fool Africans anymore. They can see through the hidden agenda up their sleeves. Mr Khama himself cannot say that with a clear conscience, for he is a fallen angel.
Fallen angels are not qualified to preach democracy. Mr Khama’s military and royal family background makes him the dictator he is. The US is not lost to Mr Khama’s despotic propensity, but only chooses to wink at it for political expediency. The US has many other awkward allies that do not uphold the democratic principles it generously prescribe to Zimbabwe.
The US national security advisor, Ms Susan Rice once offered a remarkable candid insight into the US foreign policy.
“Let’s be honest. At times we do business with governments that do not respect the rights we hold most dear,” she said in December 2013.
Saudi Arabia where women are treated harshly is one of them. It is the US’ close ally because it controls the fifth of the world’s oil reserves.
Like King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, Mr Khama is not a saint too. His dictatorial tendencies caused the split of the Botswana Democratic Party (BDP), which resulted in the formation of the Botswana Movement for Democracy (BMD). He imposes candidates during elections by using the compromise list instead of open election system.
The few moments that he allowed voting was through the raising of hands instead of secret ballot. He has forced the court to change the voting process from secret ballot to show of raising of hands when electing a Vice-President.
An opposition Member of Parliament who came to observe Zimbabwe’s 2013 elections confided in this writer that Mr Khama was no longer popular with the Batswana people.
“Had it not been the support he gets from the US, Mr Khama was going to lose next year’s elections,” said the MP.
He also narrated Mr Khama’s excessive control over the State media which he manipulates to give him undue advantage during elections. In the 2014 elections, the opposition won the most seats since Botswana became independent from the UK in 1966.
Mr Khama is not a respecter of the rule of law. He continues to retain his position as the paramount chief of the Bangwato tribe even when the Constitution forbids that. When he was a Vice-President, he continued to fly the Botswana Defence Forces chopper in defiance of the Ombudsman’s ruling.
He recently arrested and deported a US pastor for exercising his democratic right to express his anti-gay views.
Mr Khama hates anti-gay people, of which President Mugabe is one of them.
The call for President Mugabe to step down could have been provoked by his anti-gay stance.
Mr Khama’s hostility against anti-gay people gives credence to long seated suspicions that the bachelor President is not of straight morals. Probably King Mswati wanted to prove a point when he bestowed two virgins on Mr Khama.
Mr Khama drives the US interests and agenda and not at any given moment did he represent African interests.
When the African Union passed a resolution in October 2013, calling to question the conduct of the International Criminal Court (ICC), only Botswana took a strange stance against the AU resolution. He did that to please the US and boost his false reputation on human rights.
When the SADC Ministerial Committee of the Organ on Politics, Defence and Security Co-operation condemned in a Press statement Israel’s attacks on Gaza at a meeting in Swakopmund, Namibia in 2014, Botswana unequivocally distanced itself from the statement. Israel and the US are Siamese twins, thus, your guess is as good as mine as to why Botswana refused to ratify the press statement.
He is the same President who supported the indictment of Sudanese President, Omar Al-Bashir for alleged war crimes. He took the US position of accusing Mr Laurent Gbagbo of rigging elections in Ivory Coast. He also supported the UN imposed no-fly zone over Libya which eventually resulted in the gruesome murder of Muammar Gaddafi.
Despite that SADC and AU have since made it clear that Africa does not need a US permanent military base, it has become clear that Botswana is going to host them. That will result in a heavy American military presence in that country which will make it easy for them to invade sovereign African countries.
Mr Khama allows pirate radio stations such as Voice of America’s Studio 7 to transmit hate messages into Zimbabwe from bases set in his country.
You cannot expect someone who was born and received military training in the West to represent African interests. Africa knows this and this is the reason why it has not endorsed Botswana’s Dr Pelonomi Moitoi to succeed Dr Nkosazana Zuma as the chairperson of the AU Commission.
Mr Khama was proselytized by the West long back when he received his military training at Royal Military Academy Sandhurst (RMAS), where all officers of the British Army are trained.
He has appointed his crony who succeeded him as the commander of the BDF, Lieutenant General Louis Matshwenyogo Fisher to be Ambassador to Zimbabwe. He also received his military training at US Army War College (USAWC). Hopefully that military man was not also propagandised by the West and it is also hoped that he is not coming with a brief to advance the agenda of the US.
