Botswana’s “permanent democracy”

He is commander-in-chief, and is able and ready to deploy the military.

As a legal expert attests, the president is empowered to do what he pleases. And he does. Mogae over-ruled the advice of the ombudsman that the vice-president should not fly Botswana Defence Force (BDF) aircraft, and he successfully expelled an academic critic in 2005, despite constitutional provisions for free speech.

Accountability is absent from this nexus. A vital register of members’ assets was junked by the cabinet, after 10 years’ prevarication, in March.

In the undiversified economy, civil society is weak. As key public issues such as the Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR), the San/Bushmen, diamond production and the military have accumulated under the Mogae- Khama regime, journalists, academics and others have been called on to display "patriotism" and to co-ordinate their views with the government’s. When the predominance of the legislature is a criterion of a functioning democracy, the dominance of the executive prevails in Botswana.

President Ketumile Masire threatened to dismiss his elected parliament in December 1996 and Mogae did the same on two occasions in October 2004, insisting on its continuing endorsement of his vice-president. The assembly is not empowered to appoint even its own clerk, let alone exercise oversight on officials such as the auditor-general or ombudsman. Acts of parliament go unimplemented, and Lt-Gen Ian Khama, the president-in-waiting, expresses publicly his contempt for the chamber.

The judiciary’s position is little stronger. Judges are not appointed on an open and transparent basis and have no uniformity of terms and conditions. Mogae told the BBC in July 2005 that "no matter what the court might say" about Prof Kenneth Good’s appeal, he would "never let him back". The normal separation between the executive position of the attorney-general and the high court has been repeatedly breached.

The presidency moved in March to increase further its power over the membership of the ruling party — rank-and-file party members lost their role in choosing the party chairmanship and the vice-president automatically acquired the top party position. Mogae publicly expressed his dislike of criticism from his own Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) parliamentarians, on March 31, calling it "rampant individualism".

Mogae also turned his back on much-needed political reform. He said that the BDP had gone through "democratic validation" in 1997 in lowering the voting age to 18, establishing an Independent Electoral Commission and limiting the tenure of the state president to two terms. But he neglected to note that turnout in the referendum that approved these changes was a mere 18%. He affirmed his belief that the first-past-the-post electoral system had "served the country well" and said proposals for the popular election of the president were "fundamentally flawed".

Presidentialism is dominant vis-a-vis civil society, the legislature and the judiciary, and it is strong specifically in the security field. The country has since 1986 had the National Security Act, which imposes a penalty of 25 years imprisonment for publishing or merely having material deemed confidential. It places the burden of proof on the accused to establish his or her innocence, and excludes a plea of public interest. But it has rarely been used, then only against journalists and trade unionists, and never against an actual security threat.

In a country of fewer than 2-million people, there is, aside from the BDF, a plethora of security agencies. The unsatiated president moved towards the further militarisation of society and politics late last year, with the introduction of an Intelligence and Security Bill. This claimed Botswana faced "a number of threats or potential threats to its national security, political systems and its economy, all of which may be destabilised". It nonetheless failed to identify, let alone assess, one actual threat.

To meet these imagined dangers, a complex security edifice, built around a Directorate of Intelligence and Security (DIS), would be established within the office of the president. It would gather, classify and control information. It would also protect the president and vice-president, though no known threat had ever been directed against them or their predecessors. Officers of the DIS could make arrests without a warrant, and could use their weapons when "reasonably justifiable". Oversight of the directorate would be provided only by the ruling elite, located within a central intelligence committee. The legislature would have no role once they had passed the bill.

Sandy Grant, an experienced commentator, criticised the seemingly great and completely unstated costs of the DIS structures. It was hard to avoid the conclusion, he felt, that it was "to some extent a reaction to Survival International (a London-based charity and advocacy group) and Prof Kenneth Good". It would ensure that "no information" about security and intelligence would be available to the public. It would expose people to "arbitrary, armed arrest, seizure of possessions, a life sentence and no right of appeal".

As discussion was proceeding, police commissioner Edwin Batshu announced, in early December, that the government was installing a hi-tech surveillance network to intercept all cellphone and electronic mail messages without search warrants.

When a list of 17 named people required henceforth to obtain special visas before entering Botswana was published shortly after, comic relief was heightened. Canadian, American and British journalists and researchers with varying degrees of expressed interest in the San and the CKGR were seemingly banned, including most of Survival’s researchers and the BBC’s world affairs editor, John Simpson.

Mogae continues to proclaim that "we are a pioneer of multiparty democracy and governance on the continent", and otherwise informed civic organisations echo the mantra against all evidence to the contrary.

But as James Madison once observed: "The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive and judiciary, in the same hands … is the definition of tyranny."