Former Botswana President Masisi Delivers UNAM Public Lecture on Namibia–Botswana Relations

President Mumba is extremely generous, kind, and I know it is in the order of welcoming guests. He didn't reveal many things about my scars in the political when I lost primary elections at the very first attempt and took it and tried, which was meant to be the last time, after being viciously scolded by my wife for wasting time and wasting family resources and for having told many untruths that I was going to win. I was on top of my game and it was a serious loss. But thank you, Your Excellency. Thank you, Mr. Vice Chancellor, distinguished guests. And let me begin by saying how very proud I am to be here tonight. Your Excellency, the Chancellor of this university and former president of the Republic of Namibia, President Nangol Mumba, and your dear wife, former First Lady, Madame Mumba, the former First Lady, Madame Monica Geingos, the former First Lady of Botswana, and my dear beloved sweet wife... Yes. Only wife. Naomi. Speaker of the National Assembly, Dr. Saara Amadhila, the Vice Chairperson of Council, Madame Paulina Elago, we worked together in SACU for a long time. VC Kenneth Matengu and your colleagues, ministers here present, deputy ministers, former ministers, members of parliament, academic staff, esteemed Ombudsman, the Attorney General, members of the diplomatic corps present, senior government officials, students, members of the media, distinguished ladies and gentlemen, a very good evening. It gives me goosebumps to be here because of what Namibia means to me. And because of what UNAM means to me. Among the things that Dr. Mumba omitted, I think in the interest of time, is that I perambulated the halls of UNAM not as a student but as an active development worker deeply invested in applied research for HIV prevention. Around the years 2006, 2007, I think from 2005, where we trained those students we recruited to become research assistants and I was given the task of managing the research program in the north of Namibia. I'm now going to let out a few secrets. This might explain why I know so many Oshanas. It might explain why I can easily greet you in perfect Oshikwanyama. It might explain why I am able to navigate and drive you to any particular spot you want to be at in Ondangwa, in Oshana. I can cross the border either on a truck, on a bicycle, on a van, car in Oshikango, and yes, the streets of Oshakati, Otuapi and its outskirts. I can take you there and back safely. So it's immensely pleasurable for me to be with you here today for a number of reasons. I consider Namibia my home. And so sometimes when I get welcomed I feel a little out of place. I sometimes feel I should be welcoming you. Because I'm home and I have every reason to feel so. And as the adage goes, home is where the heart is. It is home for me because this also is the birthplace and the end place of my dear beloved brother and friend, Hage Geingob. If you understand the concept of acceleration of relations, look at me and Hage. If you understand what it means to beat an Olympic record in terms of fraternity, brotherhood between presidents from different generations but who relate purposefully for their nations. Bring it on. Show me anybody who is going to compete with Hage and I. If you want to have a contest, a duet if you like, of the best dancing presidents. Bring it on. And so I feel particularly privileged to be in his home, my home. Among his people, my people. And because this provides me an opportunity to share with you some highlights that speak to the depth of our relations between our two nations and peoples. Namibia, more than any other country in the region, provided for me a platform for testing my capability in statecraft. And boy did I have fun. And the reason for it in part, which I want to give thanks to you, the people of Namibia, this university, the person and the institution that Hage was. It provided an ambient environment for a young, fairly new president to come in and hustle and that I remain eternally grateful for. So I'm both professionally and personally invested in the relations between Namibia and Botswana. Our historical ties can be traced to a very painful memory of the heinous conflict, no, no, no, not conflict but genocide of 1904 where significantly large number of the Herero and Nama people were massacred, brutalized, killed by the fascist settler colonist oppressive German settlers. They were slowly but systematically exterminated even in concentration camps. There were no rules that governed the craft of war. There was no recourse. There was no international standard or institution to cry to that would listen at the time which explains the deep regrettable and embarrassing denial for so many years. That if you ask me ought to be valued and monetized. So I don't think you finish your monetization of the compensation you demand. It ain't over. The pain we feel to this day, the trauma of your neighbors in Botswana when they received, traumatized, wounded, limping, ailing, ill brethren of Nama Herero with horrific stories was trauma to us in Botswana. We still feel it today because we get very scared particularly when you look at what's going on in the world that how can this be stopped forever? How can impunity be prevented forever? Many of the Herero and Nama people who survived sought refuge in the then Bechuanaland, now Botswana, and we accepted and welcomed them. This was perhaps the initial test of how to handle relations with a neighbor when you yourself have no experience to draw from. Needless to say, we had to bootstrap and get on with the program. As we did, we welcomed our brethren from Namibia. Many of their progeny are settled in and full citizens of Botswana. While some, as you know, chose to retrace their footsteps to their land of origin, the land of their ancestors, the land of the brave, Namibia. So with this cross-pollination, intersection, forced as it might have been, how can you not claim to be Motswana? You here. So join President Mumba and declare yourselves to be Batswana. How can I standing here not claim to be Namibian? We can only perhaps successfully claim to exclude either country if we all undertook a very comprehensive DNA test to ensure that in our lineage there was no exchange, which I doubt. In the 1940s, a prominent traditional leader, Chief Tawana Moremi, had the audacity to author and deliver a well-reasoned and persuasive petition to the UN, objecting then formally and very publicly to the malicious intentions of the notorious General Jan Smuts, who wanted to fully incorporate the then South West Africa into the Union of South Africa. So imagine a traditional leader in Botswana daring to challenge the international community to live up to the promises and pledges of the League of Nations and ensure that South Africa does not, does not. And so before you developed your program of international contact, petitioning at the UN, before SWAPO came to being, here was a traditional leader who had the foresight to look out for, speak on behalf of, to internationalize and make sure that this became currency for debate, the welfare, the well-being, the future of the people of Namibia. The first seeds of our longstanding commitment to your freedom were planted. Then the formal seeds of shaping our foreign policy with respect to how we viewed Namibia was shaped by a commitment to make sure that the concept, the nation state, the people, the livelihoods, the welfare, your prosperity and peace assured. So we became the guardians and the guarantors of who you eventually became. We in Botswana looking out for other Botswana and other Namibians. The liberation movement in the region delivered another blow. How to navigate the management of state affairs in the face of blatant brutality, blatant racist, divisive onslaught. How to balance solidarity with national security imperatives and how to remain resolute while remaining vulnerable. And so as I've argued strongly and I'll argue tonight, hopefully persuasively, that yes, liberation movements, many including from Namibia, chose or perhaps were forced by circumstance into bearing arms and waging war. We in Botswana, after careful analysis, chose to bear our soberness, intellect and diplomacy and yet be a part of the liberation struggle. So yes, we claim rightfully a seat at the table of liberation movements. How could we not when we provided safe passage for every patriot of every country that needed to be liberated in the region? It was Botswana that was the birth canal. Not just birth canal, the safe, warm, assuring birth canal that always delivered. We always delivered healthy babies. Botswana played a very supportive albeit cautious role in Namibia's independent struggle primarily as a frontline state. And if you recall, Botswana was a founding member of the frontline states movement, hosting refugees, facilitating liberation efforts despite its non-aligned stance and vulnerability to South African aggression and pressure and assault. Botswana did what any reasonable neighbor could have done. That is it allowed members of SWAPO, PLAN fighters to cross its borders and seek refuge in camps near and shared frontiers, particularly the Dukwi and Francistown areas. In fact, Francistown, where for record, all your first four presidents passed through, lived in, and particularly at the White House. Yes, we also have a White House. It's a white house that was occupied by presidents in Francistown that we wish to protect and repose the history of the struggle. The White House served as a critical hub for informal reception centers where SWAPO and other liberation stalwarts personnel received temporary shelter, exchanged shared critical information and guidance and perhaps navigational tools. Even though if you talk to all former four presidents who have been through there, it was interesting how they journeyed out of there. I think one of the most hilarious was my dear brother Hage Geingob's story of how he set about with others to try and walk to the border from Francistown. And boy, I don't know what happened when my brother woke up one morning. I think the sun must have moved and decided to rise from a different angle because he turned left and faced Maun, walking. In quest of your liberation, in quest of the establishment of this very precious institution that we now enjoy, UNAM. President Sam Nujoma, Namibia's founding father, escaped to Francistown many many times including 1960 and 1964 after arrests by the South African authorities. Beyond just using the site for shelter, he strategically used it for networking with other liberation activists and coordinating onward travel to exile bases. President Hage Geingob, as I said, was in that camp in 1962, the year of my birth, and he so brutally reminded me how young I was. 'You young president, I was in Botswana before you were born.' He often did that when we had very intense discussions and if we reached a point of disagreement then he pulled that out basically to shut me up and remind me that I am inexperienced, but all with a very hearty smile. He passed through Francistown and he landed up in Lusaka. The rest is history at the institute that we so well know. Other leaders utilized the Francistown route where fighters and figures such as President Bamba and President Nangol Mumba met even at Kazungula where they had to debate whether to use a pontoon because when they look to the right when Kazungula, the Rhodesian malicious Selous Scouts were there waiting for them like crocodiles, or they swam in a river infested with all sorts of snakes, hippos, crocodiles and every danger of the current when it flowed. I think it's important to know that these transit routes enabled fighters to move toward training camps, the training camps in Zambia, training camps in Tanzania and in Angola without formal endorsement. So we enabled, we facilitated and yet we soberly and very conveniently when accused by the racist South Africans correctly that we had no training camps in Botswana. We had no terrorists in Botswana. We did not facilitate any liberation struggle style. And surely with the land mass we had, if South Africa with its might can come and help us find them, we will close those camps. Of course, obviously that's how after we had conveniently let them go and there was nothing to show for it, but that was a strategy that was applied. Even if the commitment to support and the solidarity, the relationship between Namibia and Botswana were not always rosy. There have been moments where there were challenges to the warm relations such as a territorial dispute between the unnecessary, territorial dispute between Botswana, the painful and unnecessary territorial dispute between Botswana and Namibia which was the result of 1890 treaty between guess who, Germany and the UK. And we are the ones who are the protagonists in the dispute. The ambiguity of this alienation has led both governments to issue competing claims on territory in the border rivers of the Kasikili Islands. I think otherwise called... Kasikili. That one. Representing a particularly contested prize. While the islands themselves have some value as tourist destinations, the primary concern was the division of water reserves that legal jurisdiction over the territory would offer. Tensions between the two administrations escalated to a point where arbitration of the International Court of Justice was sought as the conceivable path to deal with the dispute. It is important to note that this dispute ran the risk of sparking an interstate conflict and represented a pervasive threat to the peace and stability in the region. And I want to argue, posit that that was the lowest point in my experience and knowledge of relations between Botswana and Namibia. And for that I remain deeply apologetic. We should never have gotten there. We should never ever get there again. Utterly preventable, man-made, and driven by characters that you don't want in certain positions in either Botswana or Namibia. So look out. When we mingle, I can tell you the characters on our side and you can share the characters on your side. But when you face adversity and a conflict, you don't want egotistical persons to be thumping their chests to encourage brother to fight, brother, sister to fight, sister, mother, daughter, father, son. It doesn't make sense. So I want to urge and plead with you that as we look into the future, we must never allow ourselves to regress to that level of incivility. And I'm glad we were welcomed in a building that was as a result of cooperation with the military here. Always be guarded with military rhetoric and operational procedures because this shoot to kill was a military procedure that unfortunately found its way to escalation to pronouncement by such significant persons that it became seen as policy. And that's why as soon as I got the responsibility to exercise full executive power of my country, I erased it until you couldn't recognize wherever it had been. With the territorial dispute and the occasional tensions due to both the interpretation of handling anti-poaching campaigns and at times language used such as the example I gave of the shoot to kill, President Geingob and I refused to listen to the noise and focused laser easily. We vowed to prioritize oneness. We agreed to never look forward to reigniting the things that separate us and rather pursue best ways of eliminating injurious approaches to handling issues. But we chose to walk away from conflict. We chose to erase opportunities of it arising again. Yet we stuck to the law because on the Botswana side a full open transparent inquest was held. This is in respect of the unfortunate regrettable shooting of the Enchu brothers. We are sorry for the loss of life. He lost one life, too many threatened. We agreed to work very hard to ensure that we diffuse tension which could potentially be disastrous for our two countries. To that end, Botswana and Namibia replaced the earlier joint commissions on cooperation on defense and security by instituting a higher level platform for bilateral cooperation in the form of a Binational Commission. So we advanced our thinking. We applied. We took steps deliberate to put our money where our mouths are. And during my visit to Windhoek, the many visits that I made to Windhoek, deliberate visits that I made to Windhoek, sometimes hardly announced or announced as I was midair. This one was in September 2022. President Geingob agreed to the formalization of the BNC agreement. That's a Binational Commission agreement. And we had our first inaugural session. The Binational Commission focused on a wide range of issues of mutual interest including politics and diplomacy, legal matters, regional and multilateral issues, economic cooperation including trade and the diamond sector and social affairs, defense and security. What I think is particularly interesting for this discussion is the outcome of the inaugural Binational Commission. There was an agreement that led to passport-free travel using IDs for citizens of both countries. If I can seek your indulgence and take you into my confidence. This came out of a near casual discussion I had with President Geingob. Friendly discussion I had with President Geingob when he was my guest of honor at an agricultural show in Ghanzi. And yes, Monica remembers very well. And after we knocked our heads together and we agreed and I in my exuberance welcoming the president to the show, convinced, having looked at the power levers and levels as in the constitution of Namibia and Botswana, was ready to make it public. And so I did say truthfully that President Geingob and I had agreed that we're going to do this, but we'll operationalize it through the process of taking it through the bureaucracy. So I was throwing the ball back at the public servants to commit them to do pressure. I loved it. And President Hage Geingob in his typical self got up there and scolded me. He was my guest but he scolded me. Said you don't do that. You must take it through the... it didn't matter anymore. Accepted it. And you know why it's important to move out of the bureaucratic delays? For two and a half to three years, ordinary citizens could not travel because they didn't have the money to afford a foreign printed passport either from Namibia to Botswana or from Botswana to Namibia. They couldn't. For that length of time, those who had the passports which they had paid for expensively had them stamped with these big stamps to fill the pages fast. Just as if government was in business. Fill the passport quickly. Buy a new one. It's on sale quick. But who are we exploiting? Our own. But with the ID, no passport pages, cheap, digitized, fast and it enables many more. It enables commerce and it also enhances our integration. What I think is interesting for this discussion is the outcome of the inaugural BNC. By mid 2023, over 6,500 Namibians and a similar number of Botswana had used the ID to cross. Can somebody do the math? What did the family save? What did the government save? I got to learn recently that the Namibian passport either was or still is printed in Greece and you pay in foreign hard-earned currency. Ours I think are printed in Germany. Expensive, unnecessary, only for us to cross imaginary lines that we did not create. The very ones who are paying created them. So they make profit out of drawing these lines. We never drew lines for them and we never cash in when they travel and they travel freely in their union. We are still stuck in our old ways. Further BNC discussions accelerated 24-hour operations at the key posts like the Trans-Kalahari Mamuno border. The 24-hour operation had managed to eliminate overnight waits for travelers and truckers. The one-stop border at Mamuno has been operational since September 2024. Further streamlining clearance for people and goods in a single seamless process. The bilateral successes that I've just enumerated I believe were predicated on deeply personal relations. I never second-guess President Geingob. I never second-guess President Mumba. I never second-guessed the Namibian technocracy. I never second-guessed the Namibians. Looking into the future, I have every reason to be despondent for obvious reasons. The pressures on the systems of governments across the world, the depressive states of economies, the erosion of legitimacy and sovereignty of states, an assault on territorial integrity, and even the legitimacy of heads of state, some who are pounded on, handcuffed and removed from power like they used to a long time ago. And they told us it was not civil to do that. The onslaught on the rules-based international order, attacks on multilateralism and many other issues...

Cause for concern. However, I choose deliberately to be hopeful about the future. And I want to urge you to choose to be hopeful because there's reason to be hopeful. In fact, I'm excited actually because there are flash points. They are inflection points that indicate that all is not lost. In my relative space, I have interacted with some of the finest, brilliant, and experienced Africans who are not only intelligent but are loyal, patriotic, and principled, both here in Botswana and yes in those conflict-ridden countries. As one of the core facilitators of peace in the eastern DRC, I interact with them, including as I leave later this week to the African Union to give an update on the peace process for eastern DRC. I know in my heart of hearts that the right mix of government support and opportunities offered to these amazing Africans to help their countries can usher the Africa, the southern Africa, the Namibia, the Botswana, or if you like the future union of Botswana and Namibia, that we will all be proud of and would never regret, because that's the logical conclusion of courtship is marriage. So how long should Namibia and Botswana be courting? How long? But before you even think about it, you must ask yourself some deep questions. Tell me what the disadvantages of suiting are, if any. And if I started, I wouldn't stop. If you ask me the advantages, tell me who is most opposed to that. And I will tell you easily where they are and where they sit, what they think of us. It's none of us but them. Tell me what this would mean to competitiveness in terms of our economic progress. And as I used to argue with President Geingob in my attempt to persuade him to completely join forces on the diamond front, as I still so passionately believe, and we equalize our shareholding. We don't join forces on the base of the natural repository in the ground. We join on an equal footing and we wage. Tell me what we could do to change the world and change your life forever and ever. Yo!

But you also look at the wildlife economy space. You look at other natural resources. You look at medical regulation. You look at driving license regulation. Why should we be duplicative? Why? Tell me. That's the future I want to postulate and encourage you to dream of because yes, it'll be good if it happened. I know and I feel very deeply that the correct chemical blend of Namibia and Botswana would coalesce to form a conglomerate that can use the genius of both ends. Finally, I believe there is no smartness in being of heart. Zilch, zero smartness. My hope, as I invoke the academic research institutions to delve deep into these questions and come up with helpful solutions that are not self-creating or praising but that are additive, multiplicative, and exponential in their growth trajectory. My hope lies in the oneness of being, and it is in this oneness that will catapult us beyond where we are and get to where we aspire to be and should be at. Thank you for the teaser.