Tom Burgis, the FT's Johannesburg correspondent, interviewed him on February 26 2009, the day before his 56th birthday, amid the military paraphernalia of his Gaborone office.
FT If we could just move on then to the region. You have obviously been a very prominent player in the negotiations on the crisis in Zimbabwe next door. Do you think the unity government that we've got now, executive power shared in two places, shared between President [Robert] Mugabe and Prime Minister [Morgan] Tsvangirai, is that a government that can address and resolve the enormous problems in Zimbabwe?
IK If you had asked me to put together a combination of people who could spell disaster, that would probably be the combination, based on the fact that the two have got, there is no love lost between them. And I think they are going to really struggle.
So all one can really say is that I'm holding my breath and praying that it will work. As I say, when you see the combination of people involved there, when you know the background and the mentality of Mugabe and his party, they have been dragged, kicking and screaming, to this agreement. It is not because they wanted it or they are wanting to do it for the good of Zimbabwe and its people. Because if they had ever had the interest of Zimbabwe and its people, they wouldn't have driven the country down to the sorry state that it is today.
FT So what do you think its prospects are as a government? Do you see it unravelling? You are hoping and praying but what do you actually think will happen?
IK It's impossible to say. Really, it is, because even judging from the start, with people who were abducted or arrested in very strange circumstances, the deputy minister designate, [Roy] Bennett, being arrested as well, I just thought to myself, well, what else is new? That's just what one would expect from them. Yesterday I heard there was another problem with a unilateral decision made by Mugabe appointing permanent secretaries without consulting the prime minister. It's just an indication of why I have been very sceptical. I would be very pleasantly surprised if things do work out.
FT But you're not expecting that?
IK I'm hoping it will be. I will not say I'm not expecting it to be because I think it is possible. I think it is possible. The reason why I think Mugabe and some of his colleagues are on board is because the situation had become so desperate for them. They were not displaying the type of arrogance that they were before when anybody tried to intervene, to bring about an improvement in the situation in that country. They are on their knees. And I think they can see that they have to do something and this is the only way out. So that's why I say one is hoping that they won't try to put up too many obstacles to the process and get things moving along.
FT You were of course hosting Mr Tsvangirai here. Isn't there a danger that the MDC [Mr Tsvangiari's Movement for Democratic Change] have made a mistake here in going into a government with Mugabe still in power?
IK Do you want me to give you my answer in public?
President Mugabe has been in power 29 years, I think. That is just ridiculously long for any leader. I think 10 years for any leader [is enough], when you look around the world at some of the leaders. Take Tony Blair. He came in hugely popular. You remember how he left? You take John Howard, the Australian prime minister; he had done 11 years. And the Australian economy had done well during his time, but people had just had enough. So not only did his party lose, he also lost his seat.
And I think that is the trend. With Mugabe, you can see it. If you look back, the first 10 years that he was president – prime minister and then became president – were probably the best years for him. After that, it was just a decline. Every year, and in more recent times, every day he has been in power, things have just gone from bad to worse. So I really think, in my own opinion, that he should have, long ago, stepped down. He shouldn't, in my opinion, be there now. He should have given over to somebody else in his party to take over the reins, and I just cannot believe what kind of legacy he thinks that he is going to leave for the country and what people will remember him for.
FT But presumably, given what you're saying about the odds against this government being effective, presumably that means you're expecting the humanitarian crisis to get worse?
IK I'm hoping it will get better. I've spoken to some of those in the donor community, that we would hope in this period, as much as we understand they are not ready to engage Zimbabwe with development assistance because they want to see first how things will pan out, but I've certainly said to them that now is the time to get more engaged with humanitarian assistance. And I'm hoping that they will. And I haven't heard that they would be reluctant to do so. I think they are keen to do so. Removing all the impediments that they faced before, when they tried to get involved, and that now we will start seeing a turnaround in some of the crises, like they have with the cholera and everything like that.
But then, coming back to that situation of Mugabe, the MDC, I think, agreed to let Mugabe stay on as President in the hope that it would be a demonstration of good faith on their part, knowing that he was so desperate to continue to stay in power, and that that would see some genuine moves on his part towards reconciliation.
But we didn't see that. That's why the agreement took almost five months before it came in place, because there was just, all we saw was bad faith and more bad faith on his part. So yes, in hindsight, obviously, they probably regretted that they had agreed to that.
And that is why we have always called, as Botswana, for elections. We didn't agree to this sharing of power, just like we didn't agree to the Kenyan model either because we felt that what we need to do is to ensure, on the continent, that we have credible elections. And if a ruling party thinks it's likely to lose, and then uses its position as a ruling party to manipulate the outcome of the election so that they can extend their term in power, is not the way to go. And therefore, this power-sharing thing is a bad precedent for the continent.
FT But you were present at that meeting in January with the [Southern African Development Community, the regional bloc] heads of state when everybody thought that what was going to happen was that you would continue your stand that President Mugabe's presidency wasn't legitimate and, exactly as you've just said, elections were the answer. And then we had a deal between Mr Tsvangirai and Mr Mugabe. What happened in that summit?
IK Let me remind you, what happened was that after the presidential election [the one-man run-off Mr Mugabe staged last June], if you can call it that, and Mugabe was inaugurated as the president, we came out at that time and said we don't recognise him as the president because those elections were a sham. And that was the position we took until the 15th September when the agreement was signed. So when the parties, the Zimbabwean parties, because it's not for us to dictate what they should do that was their agreement.
So they said fine, we are signing and we are going to, as Zimbabweans, agree that Mugabe can be the president. So we said fine. If that is the agreement, and it was then supported by Sadc, the [African Union] and the UN – because they had mediators there – they were all there in Harare. And so that turned the page for us. We will recognise Mugabe as the president. Consistently after that, when things were going wrong in that five month period, we were issuing press statements expressing our concern about the way things were going.
And we were very near, just before the summit – I was going to say between you and I, but you are obviously going to put it out in your paper – but I had written to the president, the Sadc chairman, [South African] President [Kgalema] Motlanthe, that we were about to go back to our position of now de-recognising Mugabe and any of his political appointees because we could see they were frustrating the process of implementing the agreement. And then the summit was called. So we went to that summit and I attended it, whereas I didn't attend the previous one, because we didn't recognise [Mr Mugabe]. And we attended it in order to try to have a last ditch attempt to try and get this agreement back on its feet. And that was achieved.
FT You wrote to President Motlanthe, as you say, and then you were persuaded to back the agreement that came out, even though there were still political detainees at the time, even though there was still this sharing agreement of Home Affairs and all the problems the MDC had been raising. Was there something that convinced you?
IK No, no, no. What happened was that they then still attempted to get this power sharing agreement in place. You remember, he went to Harare to go and talk to the parties, and they failed. It was after that failed that they then called the summit.
So when we were at the summit, they [Sadc negotiators] said to us that, look, we went to Harare and these were the issues that they had put to the MDC. And the MDC had come up with their own issues which needed to be addressed. There were about five of them that they were unhappy with. So they felt, as the Sadc summit, that those were the things that we should stand by.
We, as Botswana, said no: we don't agree with that. Let us bring in the MDC and hear from them and try to work our way around the issues so that we can find an accommodation. Because initially when we started in the summit, the MDC were not with us and I objected to that, right from the beginning. I said how can we sit here and talk without all the parties being here? And just having Mugabe there, I can't see how we are going to make progress. So we attempted to talk around it, and this must have gone on for a couple of hours. And we weren't going anywhere. The MDC were brought in, and the MDC came and told that fine, they did not agree with the position, why they didn't agree. And I said unless we find an accommodation of the MDC's point of view, there is going to be no agreement. Having Zimbabwe continue under the stewardship of Mugabe and [Zanu-PF, his party], we were just going to see that country becoming even more and more of a refugee camp.
FT But it still is under the stewardship of Mugabe and Zanu.
IK Yeah, I guess you're right, when you read the agreement. But as I said, that is what they settled for. If it had been me in the MDC's place, I would not have agreed to what is in there now.
But as I said, I'm here, they are there. It is their country. It is their agreement and we must just give it support. That was the only thing that was on the table. Our plea and request for a re-run of that election was never ever an issue. It was never taken up. It was never agreed to. And we made it several times. And even today, we still think that would have been the best thing, to have a re-run of that election.
FT Will there have to be another election before there's a truly legitimate government in place?
IK There's going to be. That is the other thing I said. I said you can't run away from an election. There is going to have to be an election at some stage, whether it's in two years time or they allow this agreement to go on for its full term; it's now almost a year now, so another four years under this interim arrangement. But at the end of the day, they're going to have an election and where will we be then? Will we be better off, will the election be credible? We will wait and see.
Financial Times
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