President Khama is a pawn in Zimbabwe

Cuthbert Mavheko
The recent announcement by President Ian Khama that Botswana is withdrawing from Sadc and AU observer missions due to alleged irregularities in Zimbabwe’s 2013 harmonised elections has lent credence to sentiments expressed by some political analysts, this scribe included, that the Botswana Head of State and government is not a man given to independent thinking and is being used by Western imperialists to advance their regime change agenda in Zimbabwe.

It is important to observe that President Khama announced the decision to pull Botswana from Sadc and AU observer missions barely a week after US President Obama announced his administration’s decision to exclude Zimbabwe from the US-Africa summit scheduled for August this year. The two pronouncements are not only premeditated and interrelated, but are in fact, a vain attempt to isolate Zimbabwe from the rest of the continent (Africa) with a view to pressuring Sadc, the AU and other observer groups in Africa to rescind their endorsement of Zimbabwe’s harmonised plebiscite.

President Khama’s rambling that Zimbabwe’s elections were manipulated are hardly surprising. Being a puppet of Western imperialists is descriptive enough of what to expect from him. The 2013 harmonised elections are now history and, as everyone is aware, the electorate in Zimbabwe rejected Mr Morgan Tsvangirai and his British funded party and voted overwhelmingly for Cde Mugabe and Zanu-PF. That is a fact and no amount of propaganda can change it. Admittedly, there were anomalies, here and there, in the polls. But that is to be expected in any election, or any other area of human endeavour for that matter.

However, the alleged irregularities alluded to by President Khama are a tiny drop in a massive ocean of regularities.
If indeed the truth be told without prejudice, Zimbabwe’s elections were, to all intents and purposes, free, fair and peaceful. The African Union, Sadc, Comesa and many other observers have expressed consensus of opinion that the polls were the most peaceful, most free and fair elections ever held on the continent.

In endorsing the elections, African observer missions took a decision to stand by and defend Zimbabwe. In so doing, they poured cold water on malicious and deceitful overtures being peddled by the MDC-T and its backers in the US, Britain and Europe that the elections were rigged. And so, with the entire continent, except Botswana, behind Zimbabwe, the ruling Zanu-PF government should now move with haste in articulating, promoting and above all implementing programmes that carry forward the aspirations of the country’s citizenry. President Khama and his masters in the West should be left alone, to lick their regime change wounds.

People who live in glass houses should never throw stones. While President Khama continues to cast aspersions on Zimbabwe’s elections from the comfort zone of his spacious office, he forgets that his own ascendency to the Presidential throne in Botswana was not above board. The simple truth is that the people of Botswana did not choose him – he was just picked and forced on them, by virtue of him being the first-born son of Seretse Khama, the late first President of Botswana. This is a classic case of a man who was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. But if the people of Botswana accept him as their leader, it is not anyone’s business to question or judge them.

The people of Zimbabwe chose Cde Mugabe and Zanu-PF to preside over their country’s governance issues for the next five years. This is their democratic right and it must be respected by all and sundry. What President Khama and the Western imperialists appear quite oblivious to is that the majority of patriotic Zimbabweans and Zanu-PF are, metaphorically speaking, Siamese twins, sharing the same body, soul and spirit.

In a nut shell, they are inseparable. It should be highlighted here that Zimbabwe’s freedom did not come on a silver platter. The march to Zimbabwe’s nationhood was long, arduous and fraught with peril. On this march, thousands of lives were lost and countless sacrifices were made. Death, misery and suffering were the norm as the people of Zimbabwe marched toward the citadels of freedom and independence. One should state that the precious blood that was shed for freedom and independence by the gallant sons and daughters of this land is the umbilical cord that ties the povo to Zanu-PF – the revolutionary party that stood by them through thick and thin during the struggle against colonial domination.

It is an open secret that President Khama is a vociferous critic of Cde Mugabe and Zanu-PF and a stalwart MDC-T supporter and a bosom friend of Mr Morgan Tsvangirai.
President Khama is being used as a political pawn in the Western imperialists’ goal of installing a puppet government in Zimbabwe. During the Sadc extraordinary summit held in Maputo in June last year, Khama rubbished Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle, questioning why Zanu-PF still talked “about a liberation war that ended a long time ago”. While I respect President Khama as head of state of Botswana, I must, however, point out that with all due respect to him, I do not have a high opinion of his intelligence and competence to make rational judgments and pronouncements befitting a true African leader.

President Khama’s statement on Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle is outrageous in its preposterousness as it demeans and undermines a process through which Zimbabwe gained its nationhood. It is the liberation struggle that brought freedom and independence to his country. It is the liberation struggle that gave land back to the country’s indigenous citizenry and created a conducive environment for them to participate in the mainstream economy. Against his sense of things, I personally think it is an act of extreme naivety for anyone to question why Zimbabweans still talk about the liberation struggle.