Ian Khama makes risky return from exile to fight his bitter foe in Botswana elections

Former Botswana president Ian Khama’s risky return to his country after three years in exile in South Africa has shaken up the elections that will take place in Botswana on 30 October.

Khama fled Botswana in 2021, fearing for his life and his freedom. That year and in 2023 the government of his successor, President Mokgweetsi Masisi, laid charges against him for illegal possession of firearms and ammunition, money laundering and receiving stolen property. In 2022, the authorities issued arrest warrants against him for failing to show up in court to face the firearms charges.

But last week Gaborone magistrate Mareledi Dipate confirmed the court’s previous provisional decision of 13 September to set aside the warrants of arrest against him.

Khama had made a surprise appearance in the court on 13 September after quietly slipping back into the country from three years of self-imposed exile in South Africa. He told The Africa Report in an interview last month that he had returned without assurances of avoiding arrest. He said he still feared for his life and had arranged security.

He has meanwhile begun campaigning vigorously for the opposition Botswana Patriotic Front (BPF), which he helped to form in 2019 after falling out with Masisi on a wide range of issues.

The withdrawal of the arrest warrants means he may campaign without fear of arrest, though he will still have to appear in court on 29 November to begin defending the firearms charges.

Since he has already served two terms as president, Khama is constitutionally prohibited from being president again. In the unlikely event that the BPF wins, its leader, Mephato Re­­atile, would become president. More likely is that the Umbrella for Democratic Change (UDC), led by Duma Boko, might un­­seat the ruling Botswana Democratic Party (BDP). As in South Africa, Botswana’s president is indirectly elected by the National Assembly.

Not being eligible for the presidency is not an issue for Khama, as he has made it clear that he only returned to unseat Masisi from office. The two men were once close allies and Khama backed him as a successor.

But after he succeeded Khama in 2018, Masisi revealed a hitherto undetected independence of thinking and quickly fell out with Khama on a host of issues.

One of the most bitter was Masisi overturning the arch-conservationist Khama’s total ban on elephant hunting. He also infuriated Khama by severely curbing his rights and privileges as a former president.

Read more: ‘If the government can’t drive elephants away, then Europeans must come and hunt them’

Masisi also shifted Botswana’s regional and international political alignments significantly. Khama had been a lone maverick in southern Africa, for instance openly criticising Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe for smashing his opposition.

Masisi got back into line with the region. Most tellingly, in 2019, the BDP joined the Former Liberation Movements of Southern Africa (FLMSA) at its annual meeting in Harare.

The FLMSA is an informal club of seven former liberation movements now in government in the region. It’s really a mutual support group that helps them to stay in power. It partly does so by amplifying the claim they make that only they, as the liberators of their country from colonialism, have a right to rule. Which explains why most of them are so intolerant of opposition. Zanu-PF is its driving force.

Probably few people saw the BDP as a liberation movement – initially including the party itself, since it only joined in 2019.

Jane Duncan, professor of digital society at the University of Glasgow, told Daily Maverick that one danger of the BDP joining the FLMSA was that “it may adopt the same approach towards dissent that we’ve seen adopted by the FLM grouping, which is to cast domestic opposition as foreign-funded colour revolutions in need of containment, rather than addressing the genuine grievances faced particularly by the youth who feel increasingly voiceless and unrepresented by the FLMs”.

Professor Zibani Maundeni, a political scientist at the University of Botswana, also believes that the BDP joining the FLMSA presents a threat to Botswana  and that Khama’s return presents a real political threat to Masisi.  

“This Ian Khama, the Jacob Zuma of Botswana, [is] a former president who is a great tactician and poses real political danger to the dominance of the BDP in Botswana.”

He notes that in the 2019 elections Khama’s BPF “destroyed the dominance of the BDP in the central region of Botswana, and it is on friendly terms with Botswana’s largest opposition grouping – the Umbrella for Democratic Change”.

He says there is a real fear in BDP circles that the party could suffer an upset in the October elections, “largely due to the presence of the tactician Ian Khama in opposition politics. This fear could easily drive the BDP into undemocratic manoeuvrings that could threaten the country’s democracy.”

Maundeni also believes that “the BDP’s joining of the former liberation movement club provides an assurance that Ian Khama is unlikely to receive help from any governing former liberation movement in the region”.

He goes on: “There is even a high chance that the intelligence services of the region are monitoring his movements [and] his financial dealings and would help the BDP to counter any threat that he poses.

“It was Ian Khama who was tough on Mugabe and who was accused of sponsoring an insurgency in Zimbabwe in 2008. By expelling him, the BDP mended its relations with the rest of the former liberation movements, promoting cordiality and friendliness.”

However, Dr Leonard Lenna Sesa, a political science lecturer at the University of Botswana, thinks it will be a long shot for the opposition to topple the BDP and Masisi – in part because the UDC and BPF failed to make a formal alliance, which will split the opposition vote and enable yet another BDP victory, he believes. DM

This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R35.