Zimbabwe's 92-year-old President
Robert Mugabe should step aside without delay and allow new leadership
of a country whose political and economic implosion since 2000 is
dragging down the whole of southern Africa, Botswana President Ian Khama
said.
Despite his reputation as one of Africa's most outspoken
figures, Khama's remarks are certain to raise hackles in Harare, where
factions of Mugabe's ruling Zanu-PF party are locked in a bitter
struggle to succeed the only leader Zimbabwe has known.
Asked by
Reuters if Mugabe, who came to power after independence from Britain in
1980, should accept the reality of his advancing years and retire,
63-year-old Khama responded: "Without doubt. He should have done it
years ago."
"They have got plenty of people there who have got
good leadership qualities who could take over," Khama, the UK-born son
of Botswana's first president, Seretse Khama, and his British wife,
Ruth, continued.
"It is obvious that at his age and the state
Zimbabwe is in, he's not really able to provide the leadership that
could get it out of its predicament," Khama said, in comments that
breach an African diplomatic taboo banning criticism of fellow leaders.
Botswana,
the world's largest producer of diamonds, shares 800 km (500 miles) of
border with Zimbabwe and has felt the full effects of its neighbour's
economic collapse under the weight of political violence and
hyperinflation since 2000.
Although the economy established in 2009
with the scrapping of the worthless Zimbabwe dollar, a slump in
commodity prices over the last two years has triggered a cash crunch
that has fed through into unprecedented public anger at Mugabe.
No clear potential successor has emerged from the destabilising factional fight to take over afterMugabe.
Khama
said the instability was damaging Botswana's efforts to wean itself off
mining - which accounts for 20 per cent of GDP and nearly 60 per cent
of exports - by promoting itself as a regional logistics and services
hub.
The unrest was also forcing more and more Zimbabweans to leave the country, he added.
Botswana
is home only to an estimated 100,000 Zimbabweans - a fraction of the
three million believed to be in South Africa - although this is still
enough to strain public services in a nation of 2.3 million people.
Botswana's jails held "significant numbers" of Zimbabweans, Khama said.
"It
is a big concern," the British-trained former general said. "It is a
problem for all of us in the region - and it is a burden. There's no
doubt about that."
Resurrection man
In the
latest controversy over his health, Mugabe left a summit of southern
African leaders at the end of August without warning and went to Dubai,
fuelling rumours he had been taken gravely ill or may even have died.
Khama
did not discuss any specifics of Mugabe's condition at the meeting but
said his counterpart looked tired. "We're talking about a 92-year-old
man and there's just so much you can do at that age to try and keep up."
Mugabe
frequently refers to himself as "fit as a fiddle" and hints at a desire
to stay in power until he is 100. After his Dubai trip, which he
attributed to a family matter, Mugabe joked about online reports of his
imminent demise.
"Yes, I was dead. It's true I was dead. I
resurrected as I always do. Once I get back to my country I am real," he
told reporters at Harare airport.
Khama reiterated his
government's concerns about the credibility of the elections Mugabe has
won in recent years, but said irrespective of the results no leader
should cling on to power for that long.
"My opinion has always
been that 10 years leading any kind of organisation - not just a country
or a government, any organisation - is pretty much the maximum," he
said.
During its 50 years since independence, Botswana has emerged
as a politically and economically stable nation that has used its
mineral wealth prudently - a rarity on a continent where such treasures
have been routinely squandered, stolen or the cause of civil war.
Khama's
second five-year term in office ends in 2018 when he will hand over to
vice-president Mokgweetsi Masisi in a carefully scripted political
succession that makes instability almost impossible.
After 2018,
Khama, a keen nature-lover whose wood-panelled office is adorned with
pictures of the African savannah, said he wanted to dedicate his time to
tourism and conservation.
Thanks to a focus on safari tourism and
a zero-tolerance approach to poaching, Botswana boasts more than
150,000 elephants, a third of Africa's entire population of the animals.
But
Khama said there was no room for complacency in the fight against the
illegal ivory trade given the rampant poaching in other countries on the
continent.
"One day if their animals become extinct and we still have viable populations, all the guns will be focused on us," he said.
