Deported doctor’s unanswered questions

To this day Dr. Clay Wilson claims that he doesn’t know why he was kicked out of the country two years ago after President Ian Khama declared him a prohibited immigrant.

Narrating the events that led to his deportation in his recently released book ‘The Bushvet’, Dr. Wilson said that sometime in July 2011 he received a letter from the then Minister of Environment Wildlife and Tourism Kitso Mokaila informing him that the government was terminating his services as the honorary game warder at Chobe National Park. “There was no reason provided as to why I was being given a (sic) sack. I hadn’t asked to be made an honorary warden – it was National Park’s idea as means of formalising the relationship under which I operated,” he said adding that the decision devastated him.

He said that three days later he was asked to report at the department of immigration in Kasane where he received a correspondence indicating that his VISA and work permit have been cancelled and that he had 30 days to get out of the country. He said that he tried to make sense out of the government’s decision but could not come up with reason behind the reasons to be deported. Still battling with the questions as to why he was being asked to leave the country, Wilson travelled to Gaborone where he wanted to meet with president Khama face to face.

“I decided to try to deliver my letter to the president and while I was there, find out from him why I was being kicked out of the country and banned from doing my job,” he said.

At the office of the president Wilson narrated an almost nasty encounter with the president. He said that after he went through the security checks he was told to go to office 301 to meet the private secretary to the president, but along the way he says he forgot the office number and he resorted to peeking into offices looking for the private secretary.

He said that when he reached one office through the anteroom he knocked and opened the door. “When I looked inside I saw a boardroom type table with eight or nine people sitting around it and there, at the end with his neatly trimmed moustache and curly hair was president Khama, the president of the Republic of Botswana.”

Before he could apologise for interrupting him Khama’s bodyguards had already pounced on him, he said. “I clearly had the right guy but the wrong office – I heard a commotion behind me and felt hands grabbing me. The next instant I was on the ground, eating carpets and someone’s knee was on my back as the door was slammed shut in front of me. My hands were wrenched up behind me,” he said.

“I had been crash-tackled by the president’s bodyguards, four guys who had been sitting in comfortable chairs in the foyer when I had ambled up to what was obviously the president’s office. The goons had been off to each side, sitting against the wall closet to the lift so they could watch the president’s door. I guessed they had been slacking off, and one of them really should have been watching the corridor, but they made up for their error by putting me down on the ground before I even knew what had hit me,” he claimed.