I rose from a deprived childhood to presidency – Mogae
Botswana’s former president, Festus Mogae, was in Nigeria recently for the Daily Trust African of the Year award and Trust Dialogue. In this interview, he speaks on his childhood as a pastorialist and how he rose to become president of the Southern Africa
Please share with us your experiences growing up and things from back then you have carried through the years. My childhood was not very comfortable. We were poor, we were mixed farmers and pastoralists. We reared cattle, goats and sheep but also, ploughed to grow corn, beans and things like that. I didn’t go to school until I was 11. I started school in 1950 partly because my parents couldn’t afford it and partly because they didn’t appreciate its importance. They were not educated themselves. But the funny thing is that my maternal grandmother had Standard 6 and spoke good English but my mother was less so. It was a situation where the second generation was less literate than the first. In England in 1950, the exams that the children sat to go from primary to secondary school was called the 11+. That means when my English age group were going from primary to secondary, I was starting at the bottom. So you can see how disadvantaged I was although at the time I wasn’t alone. That age was part of the average in our country when people started school. Also, it was our culture that the boys wereexpected to know how to look after the cattle, milk and protect them from jackals and things like that. Then I found that even when I went to school, I was in class with girls whosebrothers were not yet in school. A girl could be in standard 4 but her brother could just be starting. It was the culture of pastoralist people.
Would you say your culture encouraged the empowerment of girls, encouraged them to be self-reliant?
To some extent it did.With more women being literate than men. Does this still exist? Well now everybody appreciates education. We all compete for our children to go to school. I think that fortunately, misguided as it was, it has remained except that now everybody goes to school. But it was in my generation that you would find the girls had gone far and their husbands were far behind them.
Talking about your growing up years, looking back, what would you tell a younger you?
I would have wanted to startschool much earlier. We were celebrating 50 years of the class of ‘65 at Oxford University, where I went. Now of course they are old like me but much younger, intheir late 50s and early 60s whereas I’m in my 70s. It now looks like it was alright but it wasn’t alright. I was five to eight years behind my generation and even while I was at Oxford, these boys were mostly of aristocracy. They had been from leading schools, but I benefitted by interacting with them. I also won a scholarship to do A Levels in England but again I was a mature student. I didn’t go to ordinary school. So I went to the Northwestern Polytechnic in London. There I read History, Latin, English Literature because originally I had wanted to be a lawyer. But the two years I was doing the A Levels, I got interested in Economics because there was a British Prime Minster called Harold Wilson and they were talking about economy, employment creation, the exchange rate and devaluation. Those were the days of fixed exchange rates. So I added economics as a fourth A Level subject and from there, I was accepted by University College, Oxford, one of the 29 colleges that formed OxfordUniversity. At that time, there were men’s colleges and six separate women’s colleges in Oxford. It’s not the case now. When I went to see my room, I found they had assigned it to a lady. But that was really an eye opener. I met many students from West Africa for the first time. Nigerians, Ghanaiansand then East Africans too. We had an African Student union. We used to meet at a house offered to us by Nkrumah in Collingham Gardens in London. We invited Malcom X to come and address us and various other people such as nationalists and liberalists from South Africa, Zimbabwe and so on.
Tell us about your interaction with Malcom X. How did that impact on you as a young African in England at the time?
I was much more impressed by Martin Luther King than Malcom X because Malcom X was the fiery speaker in saying we should break things, we should fight, these people took us by force and don’t think they can change their attitude towards us unless we use force. Although I wasn’t a follower of Malcom X, I appreciated his position - after all he was speaking for us. But realistically, I preferred Martin Luther King. Like Malcom X,
‘I rose from a deprived childhood to presidency’
I was first introduced to pepper soup in 1963 in London by my Nigerian classmate Kehinde who wanted me to eat proper African food. I try to eat it whenever I visit
he was talking change and justice. That’s what our national leaders were talking in Africa when wewere looking for independence and equality of treatment during the Colonial period. African leaders, the ones we called forliberation, would come to address us. There were also those who would ask us where do you come from and I’d say Botswana but back then it was called Bechuanaland. So I would try to explain where it was in Southern Africa.
At what point in your life did you decide you would become President and start preparing towards it?
That was when I was a civil servant in the Ministry of Finance and Development Planning. Because you are advising government where the priorities should be, we have limited resources available and we have to build the roads, the schools, hospitals and clinics and we have to prioritize. So our duty as the Ministry of Finance and Development Planning as a group of economies, was advising government on what the priorities should be. So they transition from being a civil servant, saying what the priorities should be, to becoming a politician is the same. When I became a politician, I was appointed Minister of Finance and Development Planning, the same ministry in which I grew. The content of the job was the same, worrying about water, clinics and so on. We were receiving development assistance from the Norwegians and the Swedish and they chose sectors. For instance, no way would they only provide money for rural primary-education and rural water supplies. So, if there are places where water is scarce, we have to build boreholes for drinking water. So life is expensive in Botswana for them. However, as they say every cloud has a silver lining. Because it is dry at the desert, malaria is almost nonexistent. There are close to no diseases, water is clean because it’s from 100 feet below ground.
What was the motivation for you to become president? What wasit about governance and people’s lives you wanted to change?
As I said, I read Development Economics. So development was something I knew something about. When I worked as a civil servant, I was interacting with politicians. Actually, my predecessor, who was my boss, was the one who put me into politics. I did not necessarily want to become a politician. There are aspects of politics I despise but if you want to become a leader, you have to go into politics and appear to respect some people whom you otherwise despise. But they made the final decisions and some of the politicians of course, I considered as nonsense. But my boss who was the one who persuaded me when I was retiring, told me, “help us, let us continue.” We have a provision in our constitution that four people are to be elected by parliament so when I retired in 1989, he then asked me to join politics, to stand for elections. So I did. I didn’t have to do the constituency politics. The first five years I was elected by parliament and parliament by constituency. Then after my first term, for the second term, I had to have a constituency stand for elections. By that time, I was used to politics. I had attended meetings with fellow politicians and helped some win their constituencies. I was now a politician.
When you go to bed, what puts a smile on your face?
At home I think I am satisfied with my own modest contribution as an individual. I think we haven’t done too badly and I was part of it. First as a civil servant and later as a politician. But I have also been lucky. Even when I was a civil servant, there were a lot of things we did. We held finance meetings with finance officials, we met in different countries. I like meeting different people. So I met colleagues who came here to Nigeria, to Ghana, Australia and other counties. I have known and I am known by many Africans of my generation and I am very satisfied with that and that I still have a chance to travel as a member of the Club De Madrid - an association of former presidents of the world. It is a counterpart of the African Forum. The African Forum is the association of former presidents as well. For example, Obasanjo and I are also members of Club De Madrid. I have interacted with many of your leaders which I consider as friends especially Obasanjo but also General Abdulsalami and of course Shehu Shagari whom I liked him. I hated those who overthrew him. Right now, I am chairing a commission in South Sudan. Then there’s the Intergovernmental Agency on Development covering East African countries - Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda, Sudan itself, Somalia, Eritrea and Djibouti. I am appointed as the present of Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia and Sudan. I have spent a minimum of two weeks in South Sudan every month because I have to make statement to the IGAD, heads of state, African Union and United Nations. Therefore, I travel a lot through the countries but also, into New York. But I am also member of number of charities in Africa. One of them is called the Mastercard Foundation. We’re beginning to be involved here but previously we were only in Ghana but a lot in Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda but now they have selected 10 African countries and are interested in education. That’s my bread and butter; these kind of engagements. Again, the board meets four times a year so I have to go to North America but I don’t mind flying. I am also a member of the Mo Ibrahim foundation as well. It takes me to London twice a year, once a year to Dubai and once a year to a different African capital for the meeting at the end of the year. All these foundations are dealing with issues of interest to me. I enjoy dealing with development issues.
With your tight schedule, how do you relax?
Well, I’m relaxing now. I also listen to all kinds of music. I used to dance high life.I enjoy dancing and listening to music still with my daughters, my granddaughter and also my wife. The year before last, Nigerian movies were the craze. She [granddaughter] likes them a lot.
You’re generations apart; how do you fit in?
I think I have to subordinate my interests to hers, especially being the only man. She’s the only grandchild. So she comes and says why don’t we do this and tells me what I can and can’t do. So basically, that’s my life. I was also introduced to West African music.
We hear you love Nigerian pepper soup. Who introduced you to it?.
Well first it was in 1963 in England through my Nigerian classmate, Kehinde whom we used to talk about food with. She used to ask me about what people in Southern Africa eat and I tried to explain that we eat good food. She would say “oh come on,” let me give you real African food. That’s how I knew fufu, garri and pepper soup. I try to eat it whenever I visit Nigeria.