Botswana’s new vice president, Ndaba Gaolathe, worked in Namibia and was detained for allegedly supporting former Swapo veteran Hidipo Hamutenya’s presidency.
“I was once detained at an airport in Namibia for supporting Hamutenya’s presidential bid against former president Hifikepunye Pohamba,” Gaolathe recalled, sharing these details for the first time in an interview with The Namibian and its Botswana partner, the INK Centre for Investigative Journalism.
Gaolathe, an economist and mathematician, also recounted how he volunteered in Windhoek’s Katutura and worked alongside a women’s empowerment group.
New Botswana president Duma Boko picked Gaolathe (52) last week as vice president after the opposition party, the Umbrella for Democratic Change (UDC), defeated the ruling Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) in a historic victory that ended the BDP’s 58-year rule.
Gaolathe was sworn in as vice president yesterday.
His rise to power as a politician comes 14 years after he left the ruling party in protest in 2010.
While in the opposition in 2012, he predicted the ruling party’s downfall.
“The current government will fall, not as a result of anyone’s brilliance or courage, but it will implode on its own,” Gaolathe posted on Twitter (now X).
“They will crumble under the weight of their own injustice, their own wayward habits and tastes, their own disregard for the sanctity of human life.”
Gaolathe grew up in a household of political power.
His father is former Botswana finance minister Baledzi Gaolathe.
Gaolathe obtained a degree in mathematics and economics in the United States in 1995.
After that he came to Namibia as a special assistant to Ken Kwaku, who was the World Bank’s adviser to the Namibian government.
Gaolathe said Kwaku was appointed as a principal adviser to Hamutenya when he was trade minister.
That’s when he started working closely with Hamutenya, Gaolathe said.
“Hamutenya then pulled me into his office as his special assistant,” the vice president said.
One of Gaolathe’s key responsibilities was to create a designated area where businesses can conduct certain activities with fewer formalities.
“One of my tasks was to assist in establishing the export processing zone, along with Steve Galloway, head of the then investment promotion arm of Namibia,” he said.
To Gaolathe, Hamutenya was a mentor.
Hamutenya went from being a ruling party star to an opposition party leader fed up with ruling party politics.
He was the trade minister from 1993 to 2002, but Swapo’s succession started eating into his political rise.
Former president Sam Nujoma then moved Hamutenya to the foreign ministry in 2002.
His political fortunes took a nosedive in 2004.
In May of that year, Nujoma abruptly dismissed Hamutenya from his position as foreign minister, four days before a critical Swapo congress to select the party’s presidential candidate.
This dismissal weakened Hamutenya’s campaign, leading to his second-place finish behind Nujoma’s preferred successor, Hifikepunye Pohamba.
Following this, Hamutenya faced a campaign to discredit his character and was marginalised within the political arena.
Gaolathe recalled his arrest.
“I was detained at the airport by the police until a different group of police battalions came to demand my release. “I was carrying thousands of T-shirts. I do not know how they knew. I was rescued in time. I think the then commissioner of police was an ally of Hamutenya,” he said.
Gaolathe said Namibia missed out on a strong leader in Hamutenya.
“I believed Hamutenya, with the right support, was potentially transformative. He had an immense appetite to serve his people selflessly,” he said.
Hamutenya was subsequently targeted in the ruling party, forcing him to form the Rally for Democracy and Progress (RDP) in 2007.
He led the new opposition party in the 2009 elections, challenging Pohamba for the presidency.
He rejoined Swapo in 2015 – a year before he died.
Gaolathe said his relationship with Hamutenya went beyond his professional life in Namibia.
“I, a ‘student of Hamutenya’, learnt so much from him. I tutored and used to babysit his children – Kela and Ndeipala,” he said.
“I attended his funeral, and when I am in Namibia I stay with his widow, Nangula, who mothered and cooked for me when I was an assistant,” Gaolathe said.
The vice president said the Hamutenya family will attend the inauguration in Botswana today.
Beyond politics and office work, Gaolathe also said he was involved in community work at Katutura.
“Especially assisting high school students with mathematics, science and general knowledge,” he said.
He said he also temporarily taught macroeconomics at the University of Namibia.
Gaolathe holds a bachelor’s degree in pure mathematics and one in economics from the George Washington University.
He later graduated with a master’s of business administration in finance at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in the United States.
“I was involved with the development of hawkers. I can recall a specific group of women called Okatumbatumba Hawkers,” Gaolathe said.
During his university days in the US, he was mentored by former Botswana president Festus Mogae, who took a keen interest in him.
Gaolathe entered the BDP through Mogae and subsequently became one of his speech writers.
He resigned from the BDP in 2010 and joined a team that founded an opposition offshoot, the Botswana Movement for Democracy (BMD), after then-president Ian Khama expelled the party’s secretary general Gomolemo Motswaledi.
With his strong background in finance and economics, Gaolathe has always been a sought-after economist.
In 2020, Botswana’s Weekend Post reported that Gaolathe was allegedly offered a ministerial post by then-president Mokgweetsi Masisi.
“But he turned down the offer. Gaolathe, who was enticed with the ministry of finance and economic development post, rejected the gesture on the basis that he was not comfortable with the arrangement,” the report said.
Boko has credited his political success to the mentorship he has received from Gaolathe, praising him for his composed and unruffled demeanour, which he says instilled discipline in him as a politician.
“He has a way of calming me and everyone else around him. He has the calm effect,” Boko said when announcing his deputy.
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