The President is the Constitution-personified

First things first!

We have been conditioned - through indoctrination, induction and miseducation - to believe that ‘democracy’ is the be-all and end-all of all forms of governance systems.

Yet, as my favourite Caribbean troubadour counsels us, ‘brothers we should know and not believe’, there exists other forms of governance that rival democracy in its present conceptualisation.

It is not my intention to discuss these other forms, but to expose the dearth of reason that inhabits contemporary conception of what democracy is.

Let’s start with the Constitution. It is the basic or foundational law upon which all other laws are founded. No other law can be enacted that claims superiority over the constitution.

In the same breath, any law that violates the principle and meaning of the Constitution is immediately struck down upon review by competent judicial organs, which are themselves creatures of that same statute – the Constitution.

The Constitution creates the Presidency and the President and by the same token delineates the authority and powers of these offices.

But let us face reality!

Man is an emotional creature. He cannot be reduced into a robot, a mechanical tool that can be tossed hither and thither by law. Instead man responds naturally to will. That is man’s greatest asset – willpower!

If you deprive man of this one asset, you can do whatever you wish with him, for indeed you would have reduced him into a mere zombie!

That is why the Children of Israel failed miserably to keep and live by the Ten Commandments, eventually compelling God to send His Only Begotten Son as expiation for their sins. And what was this Son’s Commandment to His Disciples – it was that their symbol is Love, they should love one another. And in that one commandment (Love) is contained the entire Law that was handed down to Moses.

If you look closely at these examples, you’ll realise that Moses was himself the embodiment of the Ten Commandments – a weak man that led by faith. We see him in a rage of fury incensed by the Israelites’ idol worship, and breaking the tablets. In another scene, we see him striking the rock when he had been instructed to speak to it so that it could bring forth water for the congregation and their livestock to drink. Through this act of defiance in which instead of exalting God, Moses upheld himself, he was stripped of the privilege to deliver the Israelites into Canaan. But, as for the Only Begotten Son, he is the embodiment of Love. He offers himself as a perfect sacrifice for them that believe in Him, and through this love abounding, a love all loves excelling, He fulfils God’s promise of Salvation. So, by inference, any leader of a nation state that is created by a Constitution must therefore - he or she also being an extraction of the statute that created the office - personify that statute.

Indeed this is the meaning of democracy in its present conceptualisation. That is, if as purported, democracy is the government of the people, by the people and for the people. If we go by that definition of democracy then the President becomes the personification of the Constitution. That is why he and he alone, bears, the Seal of the Nation. But, being fallible creatures that we are, we fall short of this standard. We bring our baggage, vendettas, and our vindictiveness one towards the other to the office!

Granted our leaders are men and women of flesh and blood. They have whims and desires. They are driven by passion. They are fallible, they are not saints, they are not sacred but the offices they occupy embody these attributes!

Our biggest dilemma is how to reconcile the person and the office, that is, to imbue the person with the attributes of the office in such a way that we negate the Tswana axiom, ‘mashi thobeng ketla kele phepha selabe setla le motsaa kgamelo’!

As we tamper with the Constitution in an exercise known as comprehensive constitutional review, let us be mindful that we marry the incumbent of the Office of the President with the Constitution.

How to do this shall remain the subject and a task for the experts – the so-called political scientists to theorise and philosophise. In the meantime, us the hoi-polloi shall clamour, stutter, bewail, shout and assail our leaders, whom we allegedly elected, with all our might, as we are wont to do. After all, it is our democratic right to vent our dissent as long as we do not violate the constitutional rights of those we are aggrieved with. In past editions, I have shown the complexity of public service – the imperative of creating apolitical institutions even though, I am aware that this is a subjective matter. If you were to contextualise the events of this past weekend as they played out in Gaborone culminating with a Kgotla meeting in Serowe at which the President was viciously attacked, you’d appreciate why there’s urgent need for a public education exercise on how government operates. We take these things for granted. Yes, they are taught merely as abstract subjects in school syllabi, but in the field of work and the reality of hard knocks, such understanding takes a whole new meaning. If we don’t know what the Constitution is and what it provides for, how then can we realistically hope to review it? For instance, does the Constitution allow a Chief or King of a tribe to engage in political activism?

What are the boundaries between traditional leadership and central government as defined by the Constitution, do we know them, and do we abide by them?

The greatest disservice happened when our founding fathers abandoned their traditional system of rule and deferred to a foreign system thinking that it was a panacea. Maybe for a time it was, because then most of the people were covered in a blissful veil of ignorance, but once that veil is taken off, chaos erupts, as is apparent!

An enlightened society is the nation’s bulwark. Such a society understands its rights as enshrined in the Constitution and can defend them by holding public servants and custodians of all public institutions accountable. But, I am afraid, in the present scheme of things we have a long way to go before we can attain such a society. Our government is founded on the principle of divide and rule. It is one that is tacitly enacted through a dual education system, in which the elite receive the best education though private institutions and the masses are indoctrinated through public schools to get by.

We must act with haste, because the time is ticking fast and the powder keg may explode when least expected.

To avert such calamity, we could start by immediately withdrawing the armed police escort that has been extended to private security firms that transport cash to banks. This arrangement has not only become a great inconvenience to public order, but it has also become something of a nuisance. In any case, why should state security reinforce private security?

We can start by keeping politics away from diKgotla, which in our custom, are sacrosanct shrines, and not ‘freedom squares’ where leaders are disparaged with flagrant impunity!

We can start by marking clear demarcations between political activism and public administration and according public institutions the freedom to undertake their mandates as per their founding statutes.

Forewarned is forearmed!