Mr VP, let’s cut to the chase; you are going to be the next president of Botswana and you come at a time which dictates only one thing; as the country’s 5th president you have no choice but to be a great leader.
The Khama presidency brought both good and bad things- many of which we could finish the whole day discussing. However, it goes without saying that we are a country in need not only of a good and accountable leadership but a confidence-inspiring leader who as well as ensuring the welfare of citizens, makes a pointed decision to stem corruption and the general inefficiency which has seen the country lose money in botched mega projects or through brazen corruption by people who have mastered manipulating public institutions and abusing public trust, as seems to be the case in the ongoing Petroleum Fund scandal.
Find inspiration in other great leaders elsewhere in the world, especially presidents like America’s 32nd and 36th, Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) and Lyndon B. Johnson (LBJ)- who as well as constructing transformative developmental agendas, saw the need to inspire their nation to new epochs of greater social optimism. Through “The New Deal”, FDR understood that the American people felt particularly gloomy about the crumbling economy, mass unemployment and declining wages among other things, while through “The Great Society” LBJ knew that time dictated that poverty and racial injustice be nipped in the bud.
Your job, Rre Masisi, is to disrupt the business as usual way of doing things in our country and inspire all citizens, professionals and laymen alike to develop new ethos and attitudes so that we become a country that gets more out of every one pula (P1.00) spent or received, so that we innovate, feed ourselves, industrialize and develop to a level which reflects the wealth of our embarrassment of natural resources.
More than that, you have a job as a human being, forget leader, to sit quietly and have conversations with yourself. In those conversations, consider what goes on in bad governments of Africa, Europe, Asia and the Americas and ask yourself if ordinary people deserve what they are put through. You know Botswana is not perfect either and there is a lot to learn from mistakes, particularly mistakes, of your predecessors.
Rre Masisi, our people deserve a new era of prosperity and unadulterated joy, all things being equal. Lead, inspire and deliver. That’s all we’re asking for.
Dear President Masisi
