Ian Khama

Ian Khama (born February 27, 1953, Surrey, England) is a retired military officer and politician who served as president of Botswana from 2008 to 2018. He previously served as vice president (1998–2008). For most of his political life he was affiliated with the Botswana Democratic Party (BDP), but in 2019 he left the party to support the Botswana Patriotic Front (BPF). He is the son of Sir Seretse Khama, who was a leader in Great Britain’s Bechuanaland protectorate—now the independent country of Botswana—and served as the new country’s first president (1966–80).

Early life, family, and education

Seretse Khama roiled Africa and the United Kingdom when he married a white British woman, Ruth Williams, in 1948, which led to his exile from Bechuanaland. (Their story was dramatized in the 2016 movie A United Kingdom.) Ian Khama was the second of their four children. He was born in the United Kingdom but educated at Whitestone School in Bulawayo, Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and Waterford Kamhlaba school in Swaziland (now Eswatini). After studying in Geneva, he attended the Royal Military Academy in Sandhurst in England. He also received additional training, including flight instruction.

Through his father, Ian Khama is the paramount chief of the Bamangwato (Ngwato) people with Khama IV as his royal name; his great-grandfather was Khama III (also known as Khama the Good), who had allied his kingdom with the British in the late 19th century. Ian Khama assumed the title from his father in 1979 and had a regent acting on his behalf until he was reinstated as paramount chief on November 30, 2024.

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Military career and entry into politics

Following his military training, Khama joined Botswana’s security forces, which at the time was the Police Mobile Unit. When its successor, the Botswana Defence Force (BDF), was created in 1977 he was named deputy commander. He later ascended to the rank of lieutenant general and in 1989 was named commander. Khama retired from the military in 1998. His love of flying is well known, and he continued to pilot BDF aircraft even after his retirement, which caused some controversy.

Politically, Khama was active in the BDP, the party his father had cofounded decades earlier. In April 1998 Pres. Festus Mogae, who had previously been vice president and was newly ascendant to the presidency, tapped Khama to serve in his cabinet as minister of presidential affairs and public administration and to be his vice president. Khama could not actually assume the latter post, however, because the president and vice president are elected from among the members of the National Assembly, and he did not have a seat in the legislative body. That was rectified in July when he won a seat in a by-election in the Serowe North constituency, and he was sworn in as vice president later that month; he was reelected to that seat in 1999 and 2004.

Presidency

On April 1, 2008, Khama succeeded President Mogae, who stepped down after having served the constitutional limit of 10 years. The next year, Khama remained in that position after the BDP won the October 16 elections and secured a full term as president for him. Under Khama, the BDP faced a united opposition in the October 24, 2014, elections. Though the party still came out on top and Khama received another term, they saw a slight reduction in the party’s share of the total vote.

Khama’s tenure as president was, at times, a study in contrasts. He was a vocal advocate for democracy and wasn’t afraid to take on other African leaders who didn’t measure up in this area, such as Zimbabwe’s president, Robert Mugabe, and the Democratic Republic of Congo’s president, Joseph Kabila. Khama also was a champion of the International Criminal Court, even when other African leaders accused the court of pursuing cases only in Africa. However, at home he was accused of taking an authoritarian approach to governance, and he showed little tolerance for dissent.

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In 2018 Khama criticized U.S. Pres. Donald Trump for allegedly using a slur to describe the countries of Africa (Trump denied having said that). Also that year, he accused Trump of “encouraging poaching” of endangered animals, such as elephants, after the Trump administration overturned a ban on the import of hunting trophies. Khama told the BBC that his concerns about Trump extended to his “attitude towards the whole planet.” Khama, a passionate conservationist, had imposed a ban on elephant hunting in 2014.

Khama himself was criticized for his treatment of Botswana’s indigenous Basarwa (San) people, who won court appeals allowing them to return to their ancestral homeland in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve. (They had been forced out before Khama’s presidency.) In spite of the court orders providing for their return, they were often met with resistance while trying to live, hunt, and access water in the reserve. Khama said that the government needed to preserve the park’s wildlife, which he said was threatened by the Basarwa’s having changed from traditional hunting techniques to using modern weapons. He also described the Basarwa way of life as “backward.”

In the manner of his predecessor, Khama retired after serving as president for 10 years and before the country’s next election. He stepped down on March 31, 2018, and his vice president, Mokgweetsi Masisi, ascended to the presidency. In Khama’s farewell speech to the National Assembly, he said, “We have the strongest democracy in Africa and should guard it jealously.”

Retirement, tensions, and a new political party

Khama soon had a falling out with his handpicked successor over a number of factors, including Masisi having sacked an ally of Khama’s, Isaac Kgosi, from his position as intelligence chief and also for having reportedly barred Khama from continuing to fly BDF aircraft, as he was accustomed to doing. And in May 2019 Masisi reversed Khama’s elephant hunting ban. “Resorting to killing is a blood policy that should not be supported,” Khama told CNN. “This will not have an impact on human animal incidents. It is a political move.” The reversal also angered conservationists.

Just a year after leaving office, Khama left the BDP and joined a new opposition party, the BPF, warning that the “democracy that we’ve been proud of in this country is now in decline” and that Masisi was “drunk on power.” In 2021 Khama claimed that there was a plot to poison him, and he went into exile later that year. In 2022 he was charged, in absentia, in a Botswana court with more than a dozen crimes, including illegal possession of firearms and money laundering. Khama returned to Botswana in September 2024 to appear at an initial hearing to face charges he has called “fabricated” and politically motivated. During the prelude to the October 2024 elections, he campaigned in support of the BPF, whose presidential candidate was Mephato Reatile. In the end, the Umbrella for Democratic Change (UDC) coalition won the election and secured a presidential term for its leader, Duma Boko. The UDC’s victory snapped a nearly 60-year reign by Khama’s former party.