Please Rre Khama, come back home, stop badmouthing your fatherland

Dear Kgosikgolo

Hello Kgosikgolo. Having seen you brag this week about your rail adventures with Kgosikgolo Mswati of eSwatini, I know for sure this brief letter will find you in good health and good spirits even though I am not sure anymore about everything else. Of late I have been reading a lot of what you share on social media and even more on the things you have shared with the international community, and I must say from all these things you write and say, I see a man so troubled in thought.

Mme kana Kgosikgolo ke a bo ke sale ke go kgalemetse from late 2018 into 2019 and 2020, gore just go to your farms, enjoy your retirement peacefully and leave politics le tshele to proven political hounds. I warned you gore all the things you were doing then would not end well for you. Look at you now. Seriti se a gogoba; every Tom, Dick and Harry is pouring cheap scorn on you, right at your social media platforms. I wonder how you feel every time you read the kind of feedback people always give you nowadays. Had you taken heed of my advice in 2018, you would by now be commanding universal respect as a great statesman from both the rulers and the opposers. Now the rulers don’t give a damn about you and the opposers do not agree you deserve any respect. Only a few, for their own selfish reasons, believe you should be given a chance at Respect.

I again warned you in 2019 when you were out on a crusade to discredit your successor, that you will not win against a sitting president, even with your misguided sense of selfimportance. You ignored my counsel. Now how has your crusade against him benefitted you or the country thus far? See, you are in foreign land now – a whole army general with pistols in his pockets, running away on account of an unarmed school teacher? Lakunle? And all you can do now is to fight hard to see his and indeed YOUR own countrymen suffer thanks to your ongoing campaign to get European countries abandoning the locals who live with wildlife on a daily basis! Gore they lose the little they were making from controlled hunting, you don’t care Phuti. Gore the too many animals in the vicinity of their homesteads kill them and destroy they crops, you don’t give a damn Kgosi yame. Imagine the amount of money our government is now wasting through that delegation of over 40 people trying to counter the repercussions of your campaign!

And ga o simolole gone fa Phuti; you have over the years tried to remotely incite civil unrest in our country through your utterances, forgetting that when we fight and die here, none of your kinsmen would be harmed. And all because you hate one man! Rra wee, re tlogelele Tautona Masisi re tlaa mo ikentshetsa ka tlhopho, e seng bo turmoil ba o ratang go ba bua bao now that you realize gore your efforts to oust him through tarnishing his image have so far failed dismally. Kana I still recall vividly the day at a rally in Serorome, Palapye, a few weeks before the 2019 general elections, when you told the excitable crowd there that Botswana will experience a civil war if Masisi is voted into power.

It was actually not the first time you shared such sentiments, and I kept warning you that by badmouthing him, you were only helping him garner sympathy votes from the non-aligned. You even went as far as saying that should Masisi win the elections, you would immediately leave Botswana to live in another country – wena le Biggie Butale when he still saw a god in you. At least Biggie remains in the country while you, for different reasons other than the imaginary civil war you so wished upon this country, have decided to go and live in South Africa where you continue to incite global detestation upon Botswana, disregarding the repercussions of your selfish crusade on the ordinary citizens of this country. You see, just like you Kgosikgolo, many of us are no fans of Mosau, but at least we respect the fact that he is the president of this country through a democratic process. Forget that baseless rigging hogwash, majority spoke in 2019, and your attempts – all of them – to turn people against him have failed, leaving you with all manner of stunts that only serve your interests and no other citizen’s.

At the height of panic and Covid-19 deaths, you presented yourself as a Messiah who cared about Batswana more than the government, o claima to have secured vaccines for the country – go sena! Then there were those one-sided interviews with several media outlets where you were the victim, a hero and President Masisi a villain; then that letter to Ramaphosa reporting Masisi and Botswana; then the SANCO march in South Africa and your acknowledgement of it; then the letters to international community imploring them to take action against Botswana... so many of your ‘interventions’ that all served your selfish interests rather than those of the country. Actually the word ‘selfish’ is a generous and considerate description of your conduct against the land of your father and forefathers. I have heard braver people use the term ‘narcissist’ to unpack the entirety of the human being that you are, and for some time I had refused to believe the word described you. I felt they were giving you too much credit.

When I studied Literature, I came across mythical Greek stories on men such as Poseidon, Oedipus, Zeus and Narcissus among others. It is from the characters and conduct of these men that I got to understand modern day expressions such as ‘oedipus complex’ and words like ‘narcissist.’ Knowing the kind of self-serving little god Narcissus was, from whose name the term ‘narcissist’ is derived, I refused to believe you were anything like him. But from the things you have been doing and saying of late, I have been observing and recalling things. Let me tell you just a little about Narcissus, the handsome son of Cephissus, and you will decide if you are anything like him. Everything revolved around him – it was always about what he wanted, what he needed and what mattered only to his life. It did not matter how other people around him were affected. Is that who you are Kgosikgolo? Is that how you would want to be remembered? I ask because I have also begun to see traits in you that fit this understanding of what a narcissist is. You have used such expressions as ‘I will not rest until Masisi is removed from power.’ Expressions such as ‘even if there has to be bloodshed,’ or something to that effect.

You see, you used to preach Discipline and always insisted on people respecting the position of the President. Your office at one point even issued a statement, when you were still President, reminding the public that you should not be addressed as Khama but as His Excellency, President, Doctor, Lieutenant General Ian Khama. Today it is you who never addresses the sitting president as His Excellency or President – for you it is always Masisi this, Masisi that. There is never any such honorary prefix as you demanded during your time. So I am for that reason tempted to agree that you indeed behave like a narcissist because you are failing to accord the respect and honour you demanded for yourself as President, to the current President. When you go about threatening civil strife on our country as you were doing on one television interview in Mzansi, you ignored the fact that you were the only one with those thoughts. Rona ga re batle ntwa Kgosikgolo.

I need to remind you that a lot of Batswana did not like you as President, but they never for once thought of using violence to remove you and your then political party from power. So why are you so impatient with the President you dislike that you keep talking of turmoil that has to visit our country in order to oust him? You must chill, my King, and allow us to remove him through the ballot, the same way we put him there despite your bad-mouthing of him throughout 2019. Kana your never-ending fights with him have only helped distract us from the real issues bedevilling our country. Maybe on our own we might have picked a lot rot about him. Jaanong oa re sira.

Maybe let’s again talk about that man called Narcissus to close this matter of your character once and for all. You see, nothing was ever the fault of Narcissus, it did not matter what evidence was provided to the contrary, it still was never his fault. And I dare ask, is there anything you ever admit to be your fault Kgosikgolo? You are forever on social media crying about one thing or the other, and everything therein is the fault of someone else. You never look at yourself to at least review the part you are playing or you have played in the economic and social mess that is our country today. I bet even with the civil war that you were so itching for, should it happen, God forbid, you will still stand aside and say everything should be blamed on ‘Masisi and Cava’ as you always call your nemesis and erstwhile political home. It is never about you. Wena tota o ipona o le moengele, modingwana fela o senang selabe. Mopalamente Kably kana o kile a re o Jeso; I suspect he mixed up the names of Jesus and Narcissus at the time. Poor man! Le gale kana even some Bangwato at some kgotla meeting in 2022 were saying fa go tswa Modimo go tsena wena. And you seem to revel in such utterances that you then behave indeed, like you are some demigod – more like Narcissus of course.

You need to take stock of yourself Kgosigolo and remain humble for your people to give you the respect you actually deserve as royalty and as a former president. I don’t like the things people say about you at your social media platforms these days. To your face le gone. Le wena you can see gore nowadays they don’t spare you - on your own facebook account. Just stop this thing of seeing yourself as all-that, and other people as nothing - as with Minister Autlwetse for instance, whom you once described as beneath you, o mmitsa subject! Do you even remember that his car was burnt, thanks to your numerous insinuations about him at the time? But hey, do you even care? You even blamed Cava for the incident, not you - typically. Did you even offer any word of sympathy to the family ne Kgosikgolo? Not you my King. You see, here is the thing about that Greek guy, Narcissus - he lacked empathy and compassion, and the only feelings he cared about was his own. More to that, everyone around him was an object to be used for his own gratification and needs. Beyond that, nobody was anything.

See how you always hide in silence whenever a wild animal kills a human being in the Chobe area but you are quick to travel to Europe to report to your uncles whenever a wild animal is killed by humans! Ga o na sepe le ope! I am reminded too, of one Pelonomi Venson-Moitoi. And about Biggie Butale too. And even the current president as well. At one point when these three were useful to you, they were in your good books, or so it appeared; only for you to ditch them later when they were no longer of any use to you. Kana gatwe you put President Masisi where he is now, against the will of majority in your cabinet, because at the time you saw in him an easy object that could be used to fulfil your post-presidency aspirations. Typically, you then turned against him when he could not deliver on your expectations. Gatwe o ne o rile a dire monnao Vice President! You saw it as betrayal when he didn't, and that’s why you detest him, we are told.

Mma Moitoi too, was useful as a tool against President Masisi when you, in various forms, sponsored her challenge for the presidency of the BDP. When she chickened out of the race, you forgot about her. As for poor Biggie, I wonder if he still harbours the thoughts of joining you in exile. When you two were together fighting Mosau from the same corner, you promised to flee the country together should he win the elections in 2019. We now know what has happened between you two. Tota wena only a few understand you. Le ene Reggie ko BPF would be a fool to think his political career is safe around you. Talking about that, I see some independent media personnel are flirting with you these days. Yet from the time you were head of the army until you were President, you never hid your disdain for the private media, even going to the extent of saying wena you never even read private newspapers. We shall not forget, Kgosikgolo, that your government’s decision to starve the private media of business in your era of hatred towards the industry, resulted in several job losses for which you showed no empathy.

Now that today the same private media is useful to you, we hear you suddenly even spend money on it to interview and spread your preferred narrative - the narrative that since you left office, Botswana is a bad country to live in, and that the only way now is to fulfil your 2019 civil war prophesy to remove the current leadership. I have been hearing that you want to invite some journalists from here in Botswana to visit you in South Africa for a series of interviews. Fully-sponsored. We all know what you will be telling them.

Kgosikgolo, I am here again pleading with you to stay away from politics and return to Serowe to take up your place as the people’s King. You are slowly losing your popularity because more and more people have begun to see through you. The remnants who seem to be on your side are actually not on your side – they are just anti-Masisi and his party and derive satisfaction from everything negative you say about the BDP and its leaders. Once Masisi and Cava are out of power, I warn you, the same people will find no use for you and will even prosecute you. I still doubt Comrade Duma has backed down on his word that when UDC takes over power, ba ya go go tlhatlhela e be ba go beola. For now I suspect he is playing to the gallery – siding with you while you remain useful to him and his associates. Don’t say I did not warn you. Ba ya go go tlhatlhela.

For now just work on smoking a piece pipe with Mosau – he will not say it publicly but he can use his presidential powers to pardon you. Tota rona we are now tired of ntwanyana ya lona whose roots no one wants to share – at the expense of taxpayers’ money le gone. Only you two know se lo se lwelang - jaanong lo re tsenya mo teng ka ditsompelo tsa puso. We have unfairly become the proverbial grass that suffers when two bulls fight. Re lapile. Just come back home Kgosikgolo where we will shower you with love and call out those who compare you to Narcissus. Gape stop with these threats of turmoil on our country – your father Seretse loved reminding everyone that ntwakgolo ke ya molomo. Hoping to welcome you home soon!

Yours with love,

Joe-Brown