Former President Festus Mogae’s death has triggered the expected tributes: the statistics, the statesmanship, the global acclaim. The world remembers the Nobel worthy HIV/AIDS response, the fiscal discipline, the calm stewardship of a country that often seemed too sensible for the chaos of its region.
But there is another side to Mogae’s legacy that deserves equal remembrance, one that may never fit neatly into official speeches.
It is the story of a president who understood that democracy is not tested by how leaders treat their friends, but how they treat their critics.
And I know this because I was one of his fiercest critics. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, as Editor of Botswana Guardian, I had together with my colleague Ernest Chilisa, waged a relentless editorial war against Mogae and his administration. We published stinging exposes on his role in the Owens Corning North South Carrier Water Scandal. We questioned his leadership style. One of our most controversial stories – ‘The Shrinking President’ – became symbolic of a newsroom that refused to genuflect before power.
The response from government was swift and punitive. The Mogae administration withdrew government advertising from the Botswana Guardian and its sister publication, The Midweek Sun. It was an economic embargo meat to suffocate independent journalism.
We fought back in court.
And in a judgement that would become a landmark for media freedom in Botswana, Justice Isaac Lesetedi ruled in our favour. That ruling mattered because, under Mogae, institutions still possessed enough independence to embarrass the state. Today, government still operates an undeclared advertising ban against the private media. But no media house dares challenge it in court anymore. Not because the precedent disappeared, but because confidence in institutional independence has eroded so profoundly that editors and publishers fear the judiciary itself may no longer defend the principle it once upheld.
That contrast may be one of the clearest measures of Mogae’s legacy.
Ironically, my deepest understanding of the man came not during battle, but during an unexpected act of grace. Sometime in June 2006, I received one of the most unlikely phone calls of my career. The voice on the other end of the line was from the Office of the President, informing that Mogae wanted me to join him on a trip to Japan for ‘Botswana Week’ in Tokyo.
I was stunned.
At the time, our relationship with government was openly hostile. I had recently left Botswana Guardian to co-found the Sunday Standard together with Spencer Mogapi and Professor Malema. We were struggling to survive a hostile takeover bid.
Peo Venture Capital, then jointly owned by Debswana and De Beers had funded the newspaper. But the late Louis Nchindo had approached Peo seeking to buy their controlling stake in the Sunday Standard. We were given 30 days to match his offer or lose the newspaper.
It was a terrifying moment. Nchindo’s influence within Botswana’s corporate and political establishment was immense. No commercial bank wanted to antagonize a man so closely associated with Debswana by financing us against him.
So when Mogae’s invitation arrived, Japan was honestly the last place I wanted to be. But I accepted, anyway. And somewhere in Tokyo, during what began as a casual conversation, Mogae asked how the Sunday Standard was doing. Eventually the discussion drifted towards Nchindo’s attempted takeover.
I expected indifference. Perhaps even quite satisfaction. Instead, Mogae surprised me. He asked why we had not approached Citizen Entrepreneurial Development Agency (CEDA) for funding.
I laughed off the idea. Given our long and bitter history with government, I told him it was inconceivable that a state-owned institution would finance people who had spent years attacking the presidency.
Mogae disagreed. Firmly. ‘The fact that you have a hostile relationship with government does not make you any less Motswana or patriotic’, he told me. ‘We have had an adversarial history and we will probably have and adversarial future. It is the occupational hazard of the careers we have chosen, but that does not take away your citizenship rights to benefit from citizen empowerment schemes.’
That sentence revealed more about Festus Mogae than a thousand polished tributes ever could. He understood something many African leaders never do: the state does not belong to the ruling party. Government resources are not rewards for loyalty and citizenship rights do not expire because one is inconvenient to power.
CEDA eventually funded us. We bought out Peo. And the Sunday Standard survived.
At Mogae’s memorial service this week, the then CEDA Managing Director, Dr. Thapelo Matsheka publicly confirmed the behind the scenes pressure surrounding the decision. ‘Rre Nchindo had leveraged his friendship to President Mogae and would come heavy on me’, Matsheka recalled.
‘Rre Nchindo was livid and went to report at Mogae’s office. I was again called to explain myself. Mogae understood my position and let it be.’
Then came the line that perfectly captured Mogae’s dry humor and appreciation for institutional independence.
‘I reminded Rre Mogae later, when he had a fallout with Nchindo, that if he had interfered, Nchindo would have been using the paper to bash him, and he laughed.’
That laughter matters. Because it reflected a rare confidence in democratic contestation, confidence in criticism, confidence in institutions stronger that personalities. In fact, he publicly stated that he believed in strong institutions and not strong men.
Mogae was not a perfect president. No honest tribute should pretend otherwise. His administration could be cold, technocratic and occasionally heavy-handed. His government did punish the media economically. Many journalists, myself included experienced that hostility directly. But even at his most adversarial, there remained lines he would not cross. He understood that institutions matter more than temporary political victories. He understood that courts must sometimes rule against the state. He understood that empowerment institutions should not become political weapons. He understood that a newspaper critical of government still has a right to exist. And perhaps most importantly, he understood that leadership requires enough self-confidence to tolerate dissent.
That culture feels increasingly endangered today. In an era were criticism is often treated as treason, where institutions are expected to kneel before political power and where access to state resources increasingly appears contingent on political loyalty, Mogae’s conduct now feels almost unfashionably democratic.
This may ultimately become one of his greatest legacies. Not merely that he governed Botswana competently. But that he governed it without demanding that everyone become his poodle.