January 4th 2024

Press Release

To All Media Houses

Signed: Mogomotsi Kaboeamodimo CEO SKI KHAMA FOUNDATION

________________________________________________________
Subject: Khama and Masisi in Angola

1. We react to a Press Statement issued by the government of

Botswana making reference to a “working visit” that His Excellency
President Masisi is said to have undertaken to Angola at the
invitation of His Excellency President Lourenco of Angola who is also
the current Chairperson of SADC.

2. It is mentioned in the said Press Statement that President Masisi

went to Angola to “brief President Lourenco on the government of
Botswana’s position…” on what is described as a “self-imposed
exile…” by His Excellency General Khama and his family.

3. The position of the SKI Khama Foundation on this is that the

government of Botswana has yet again chosen to withhold full
disclosure and opted for half-truths about why there was an
invitation in the first place and what happened in Angola.
4. We can confirm that indeed there was an invitation to both President
Masisi and former President Khama from the Chairperson of SADC,
except that the invitation was for the specific purpose of bringing
Khama and Masisi together face to face for a possible resolution of
their issues which requires the presence of both. That is why the two
of them arrived in Luanda (Khama on December 27th )after
accepting the invitation and giving their assurances that they were
prepared to meet and talk as invited by President Lourenco.

5. Our information is that after arriving in Angola President Masisi

became unavailable for the agreed meeting and instead opted for a
private meeting with President Lourenco, and left immediately after
that meeting. We have not been favoured with reasons for the
sudden somersault on the part of President Masisi. We challenge
government to take the nation into confidence and say why the
President could not honour his own undertaking to participate, after
travelling expensively at the taxpayer’s cost as he regularly does.

6. What cannot be denied is the fact that this is a characteristic

conduct of President Masisi on several occasions whenever efforts
are made both locally and from outside the country to bring about
mediation on the Botswana issue. Eminent persons in Botswana and
from outside the country, including former and current Heads of
State and government, have made several attempts to reconcile
 President Masisi and former President Khama without success due to
President Masisi’s unexplained unavailability.

7. For the record once more and contrary to routine government

disinformation, the first effort by Botswana elders who included
former President Mogae and others, failed not because Khama
became uncooperative as government would have us believe, but
because the Botswana Democratic Party elders did not hide their
mission to speak for Masisi and ignore Khama’s complaints of
curtailment and withdrawal of his retirement benefits without
discussion or justification. It was during this time that the Office of
the President made it impossible to have genuine and sincere
discussion by harassing the former President including preventing
him from doing philanthropic work.

8. It is public knowledge that President Masisi creates periodic false

impressions that he desires reconciliation with General Khama, as he
did in Shoshong and even in the build up to Angola recently, but
never follows up or make himself available when invited.

9. The fact of the matter is that this issue with all its implications has
reached both SADC and the United Nations with a consequent
demand for answers from Botswana by the UN Special Rapporteur in
March 2021. A dossier chronicling all this with empirical evidence was
distributed for the attention of SADC Heads of State and Government
during the month of June 2023.

End of Statement.