Quett Masire

Ketumile Quett Joni Masire, GCMG (23 July 1925 – 22 June 2017), was the second and longest-serving president of Botswana, in office from 1980 to 1998.

Masire was born on 23 July 1925 in Kanye, Botswana, into a cattle-herding family to Gaipone (née Kgopo) and Joni Masire.

He grew up at a time when there was not much economic activity in the country other than being a lowly-paid migrant labourers in the mines of apartheid South Africa.

From an early age Masire set himself apart through academic achievement.

After graduating at the top of his class at the Kanye school, he won himself a scholarship to further his education at the Tiger Kloof Educational Institute in South Africa.

In 1950, after graduating from Tiger Kloof, Masire helped found the Seepapitso II Secondary School, the first institution of higher learning in the Bangwaketse Reserve.

He served as the school's headmaster for about six years.

During this period he clashed with Bathoen II, the autocratic Bangwaketse ruler.

Resenting Bathoen's many petty interferences in school affairs, Masire, working through the revived Bechuanaland African Teachers Association, became an advocate for the autonomy of protectorate schools from chiefly authority.

In 1957, Masire earned a Master Farmers Certificate and established himself as one of the territory's leading agriculturalists.

His success led to renewed conflict with the jealous Bathoen, who seized his farms as a penalty for the supposed infraction of fencing communal land.

In 1958, Masire was appointed as the protectorate reporter for the African Echo/Naledi ya Botswana newspaper.

Masire married Gladys Olebile Masire in 1958.

Sir Quett and Lady Masire had six children.

He was also elected to the newly reformed Bangwaketse Tribal Council and after 1960, the protectorate-wide African and Legislative Councils.

Although he attended the first Kanye meeting of the People's Party, the earliest nationalist grouping to enjoy a mass following in the territory, he declined to join the movement.

In 1961, Masire helped found the Botswana Democratic Party (BDP).

He was instrumental in the formation of the party, and served as its first secretary-general.

In 1965, the Democratic Party won 28 of the 31 contested seats in the new Legislative Assembly, giving it a clear mandate to lead Botswana to independence.

He was elected to the National Assembly in March 1965 and became Deputy Prime Minister in 1966.

Masire became the new nation's vice-president, serving under Seretse Khama, in 1966.

As a principal architect of Botswana's steady economic and infrastructural growth between 1966 and 1980, Masire earned a reputation as a highly competent technocrat.

However, his local Bangwaketse political base was eroded by his old nemesis Bathoen.

During the initial years of independence the Democratic Party government moved decisively to undercut many of the residual powers of the chiefs.

As a result, in 1969 Bathoen II a Seêpapitsô abdicated, only to reemerge as the leader of the opposition National Front.

This set the stage for Bathoen's local electoral victory over Masire during the same year.

However, the ruling party won decisively at the national level, thus allowing Masire to maintain his position as one of the four "specially elected" members of Parliament.

Until 1980 he also held the significant portfolios of finance (from 1967) and development planning (from 1967), which were formally merged in 1971.

Khama died on 13 July 1980, and Masire automatically became acting president per the Constitution.

Five days after Khama's death, Masire was elected as president by secret ballot at the National Assembly on 18 July 1980.

Masire's three full terms were characterised by an emphasis on developments through regional and international organisations.

Masire was chairman of the Southern African Development Community and vice chairman of the Organisation of African Unity; he was also chairman of the Global Coalition for Africa and a member of the UN group on Africa Development.

On 7 August 1988, while flying with his staff to a summit in Angola, his executive jet was accidentally shot at by an Angolan Air Force MiG-23.

The plane was damaged and Masire was injured, but the co-pilot was able to make a successful emergency landing.

He was honored with the Knighthood of the Grand Cross of Saint Michael and Saint George by Queen Elizabeth II in 1990.

He was a leading figure in the independence movement and then the new government, and played a crucial role in facilitating and protecting Botswana's steady financial growth and development.

He stepped down in 1998 and was succeeded by Vice-President Festus Mogae, who became the third president of Botswana.

Following his retirement in 1998, Sir Ketumile Masire was involved in numerous diplomatic initiatives in a number of African countries, including Ethiopia, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Ghana and Swaziland.

Between 1998 and 2000 he served as Chairman of the International Panel of Eminent Personalities Investigating the Circumstances Surrounding the 1994 Rwanda Genocide, and between 2000 and 2003 was the facilitator for the Inter-Congolese National Dialogue, which had the objective of bringing about a new political dispensation for the Democratic Republic of Congo, in terms of the Lusaka Ceasefire Agreement.

In 2007, Sir Ketumile Masire set up the Sir Ketumile Masire Foundation to promote the social and economic well-being of the society of Botswana.