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5 Official Blundering and the Discredited Commission the problematic of “blundering” and past success The story of Botswana’s state of emergency in 1999 after an election blunder , told briefly in chapter 1, might seem to call into question the view, underlying much of this book, of Botswana and its state-building elites. Further , President Mogae, more recently, has had to suffer the political embarrassment of having his front-page picture—in which he stands, confidently poised, with his 2001 referendum ballot in hand—next to the bold red headline “Referendum Fiasco” (Mmegi Monitor, 6–12 November 2001). If Botswana has a capable state and a relatively open society, how is it that the newspaper headline of September1999, “Mogae Blunders” turns out to foreshadow a whole series of blame headlines, over several years, exposing presidential and other governmental “blunders”? Or, rather, if the muckraking itself supports my view of a relatively open society—and it has been accompanied by a successful defense of freedom of the press, including the right of the press to be critical of the government’s performance—how does the “blundering” fit the existence of a capable state in Botswana? Why so much talk of “blundering,” and what does it all mean for the study of nation- and state-building elites and civic virtue in Botswana? These questions are not merely academic. A political version has clearly 86 bothered President Mogae himself. After the 1999 electoral state of emergency , presidential embarrassments followed one after another, including the postponed referendum in November 2001. This referendum, too, appeared to be bungled by “blundering.”1 The referendum was about amendments to the Constitution and had to be called for a mandate to restructure the country’s courts and judiciary. The original phrasing in the Constitution was awkward; technical considerations in the law meant that the rephrasing, if not as cumbersome, would still seem to have little interest or significance for most people. Moreover, the referendum had to be postponed at the last minute, apparently because of “blunders.” Despite a countrywide campaign for mobilization, including tours by ministers, less than 5 percent of the total valid voters turned out (Tutwane 2001b, 3). In some polling stations, like the one in my home village in the Tswapong Hills, more polling staff passed through than voters. For the press, at least, President Mogae became virtually the opposite of America’s Ronald Reagan. Unlike the Teflon president, everything seemed to stick to President Mogae. Yet, on President’s Day in July 2001, the Botswana Guardian ran a laudatory account of the President’s life under the headline “Mogae’s Success Story Mirrors That of Botswana” (13 July 2001). The grounds for that opinion , placing Festus Mogae in the front rank of the country’s state-building elites well before he became President, are substantial. For this reason they need to be documented in detail here. Doing so provides a better perspective on the appearance in Mogae’s administration of “blundering.” It also provides a significant basis for my discussion of the testing of good governance and political morality in a major constitutional crisis. The events around this crisis I call the Khumalo Affair, after the retired South African High Court Justice Joshua Mdabula Khumalo, who headed a one-man presidential commission of inquiry, which met in November 2001; it is the Khumalo Affair that this chapter documents, mainly to shed light on the negotiation in and through a major constitutional crisis. This account advances my discussion of the role in state building of Kalanga elites and, among them, most prominently in this chapter, Attorney General Phandu Tombola Skelemani. First the success story: President Mogae came to political office already widely recognized to be a consummate technocrat. As a politician, however, he was regarded by some to be still a novice: at least, that is, compared to “Party Strongmen,” the leading ministers with long service both in the cabinet and in the ruling party. A member of the first postcolonial cadre of university graduates, and with a reputation among them for being one of the ablest, Mogae was perhaps the very first to receive his degree in economics from Oxford University.2 It is legendary that he likes to lecture his ministers in cabinet, somewhat after the manner of an Oxford don. This lecturing manner has been noticeable not only in some of his parliamentary interventions but also in his speeches. For example, in 1999, I heard him speak on the occasion of opening...

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