Duma Boko: the angriest man in Botswana

President Advocate Duma Boko comes across as a deeply hurt person. He is an angry man, very angry, despite his claim that he’s chosen to be a ‘wounded healer’. Addressing a press conference recently, the President laid bare his soul in a telling statement when he fielded questions from journalists.

“I had an opportunity when I came in ... I could have become a wounded hurter. I was wounded, myself. I was carrying psychic scars and ontological bruises, I was carrying those ... from BURS, from all over, even from yourselves, the Media!

“I was carrying scars, I still have those bruises from you ... vilification, all sorts of untruths and lies! I could have become a wounded hurter. I could have come after all of you! Because the power is there. Would it make sense? Is it justifiable?

“What did I choose to become? A wounded healer. That’s what I am, a wounded healer!”

What surprises me is the hand clapping from the senior public service officers that usually follows these attacks. I have asked this question before: why do senior government officials crowd what essentially is meant to be a Press Conference?

These officers go to the extent of even taking up front seats and relegating journalists and photographers to the background! It’s not only public officers, but even political party cadres do the same when their leaders address press conferences.

This has to stop. A press conference is just that, a press conference! It is attended by Members of the Press! They must not be intimidated by political party activists or senior public officers. A Press Conference must be an environment conducive for men and women of the Press to engage freely with the person or organisation addressing them. And by free, I mean journalists being able to ask follow-up questions or to intercept the speaker when he or she digresses and begins to lecture instead of responding specifically to the concern raised. Anyways, let’s return to President Boko and his temperament. I truly understand that he’s been deeply hurt by all the stuff that people said about him when he campaigned for the leadership of the country! He felt violated. I have no doubt about this.

But that stuff comes with the territory once you vie for public office, and President Boko obviously knows this. You have to build a thick skin if you campaign for public office. All that stuff is now water under the bridge. He cannot now use it as cannon fodder to launch unprovoked attacks on, especially the Media, whenever he gets the chance.

President Boko says in the same Press conference that, ‘Someone has to rise beyond the fray and become a unifier’, and he tells us that, that someone is him!

But his words betray him. There’s a Setswana maxim, ‘Kgosi thothobolo e olela matlakala’!

Boko must learn to live by this adage; it will help him to remember that he is now the PRESIDENT of this country and no longer a leader of the opposition party.

He is the father of the nation. He is expected to treat everyone in this country in the same way that a parent treats their own children at home.

A family is a unique unit. It comprises diverse people. The father may be a labourer at a construction company, and the mother a maid in someone’s home, while the children hustle for a living as drivers, artisans or in some cases, car washers.

In another instance, the father may be a President, Cabinet Minister or Member of Parliament, and the wife a lawyer or lecturer at a University, while the children enjoy the lap of luxury as entrepreneurs, tenderpreneurs or businessmen and businesswomen on account of their parents’ standing in society.

In some cases, the children of these leaders are drug traffickers, abusers, and molesters! That is life.

The sad part about our society is that our education system was designed to produce workers. This explains the many youths who fall off at junior and senior secondary into an uncertain existence.

The country has an abundance of unskilled and uneducated people, just as it has a host of educated and skilled people. These are just the people that President Boko leads. He is going to need to understand them. He will need God’s wisdom to lead this nation.

He cannot whip it into line. He needs not rebuke, ridicule or belittle anyone on account of their educational background. There are so many school/college dropouts in our midst, yet these are the people who voted the Umbrella for Democratic Change and Boko to lead them.

They expect policies and programmes that will transform their miserable lives for the better and deliver them to the Promised Land, which they (UDC/Boko) promised. They don’t expect every twist and turn to be maligned and whiplashed. Take this week’s address to the Chief Executives and Board Chairpersons of State Owned Enterprises, when Boko once again turned his ire and fury on the Media:

“We must engage in rigorous analysis. Our situation demands intense, serious examination. Not the crude distortions that pass for analysis out there in the public domain, where the lethally ignorant and eminently unqualified masquerade as experts and analysts, and acres of newspaper space are littered with their drivel!”

These sorts of attacks do not benefit the President’s drive to unify the nation. They serve only to build dissension by those who feel disparaged.

Again, President Boko must remember the Tswana maxim, “Mafoklo a Kgotla a mantle otlhe’ and ‘Mmua lebe o bua lagagwe gore mona lentle a letswe’ – these counsels have been the pillars and hallmarks of our fragile democracy.

These Tswana precepts are the very essence of free speech. And as a Human Rights lawyer, President Boko must find it in himself to accept that this society is not a High Court Bench, where a

Judge presides over a litigation argued by eminent Counsels for the Applicant and the Respondent.

The society that President Boko leads is diverse, and newspapers, like someone once said, are like supermarkets, they cater to the different tastes of their customers/readers.

But, however shallow, opinionated, or misplaced you perceive their analysis Mr President, they have duly expressed it, and you can either take it or discard it if you feel it amounts to drivel!

Yet, that is the beauty of free speech! And I think you will agree with me that’s exactly what cost you the election victory in 2019 when you expressed your feelings about the country’s leadership of the time, including its forebears by referring to them as ‘Magoga Jase’ and other such epithets!

I am worried Mr President that you seem to have anger management issues. Mr President the people of this country wish you well and wants you to succeed. How can they not, when they face such hardships and adversities on account of a declining economy?

Just recently, you told senior Police Officers that 90 percent of the things that the Media write are lies. And they, too, applauded you for these remarks!

I have covered Presidents Quett Ketumile Johnie Masire, Festus Gontebanye Mogae, Lt. Gen. Dr Ian Khama Seretse Khama and your immediate predecessor, Mokgweetsi Eric Keabetswe Masisi.

The Media were there all the time, pointing out their undoing, Masire with ‘bo matlhogojane’, Mogae’s ‘Ke tla le kabolola ditshoka’, Ian Khama proclaiming he does not read local newspapers, and Masisi's admonishment in a Kgotla, ‘lare nnywee nnywee!’