Ian Khama
Ian Khama was president of Botswana from 2008 to 2018, the son of the founding president Seretse Khama and his English wife Ruth, the Sandhurst-trained general who had commanded the Botswana Defence Force for nine years, was made vice-president by Mogae in 1998 straight from the army. He took the presidency by succession in April 2008 before winning the elections of 2009 and 2014. The ten years were the financial crisis that halved the diamond revenue in 2009 and the recovery after. There were the alcohol levy and the bar closing hours of a teetotal president who disliked the capital's drinking. There was the intelligence service he created, the DIS, whose spies and whose killing of a suspect in the street in 2009 made the country ask whether it was still the exception. There was the hunting ban of 2014 that pleased the conservationists and not the villagers, and the rule by decree and the directives from the palace that the civil servants called the general's way. There were the public sector strike of 2011 broken by dismissals, the ban on the opposition's radio, and the foreign policy that alone in Africa condemned Mugabe, Bashir and the Chinese on Tibet. There was the poverty that the growth had not reached. He was born in Chertsey in England in 1953, while his parents were in the exile that Britain had imposed for their marriage, grew up in Serowe and Gaborone, went to Sandhurst. He was the army's commander from 1989 to 1998, a pilot who flew himself. He is the paramount chief of the Bangwato in name, never married, and is said to be shy. He handed over in April 2018, under the ten-year rule, to his vice-president Masisi, who within a year had reversed the hunting ban, dismissed the intelligence chief and cut the palace's privileges. Khama left the party his father had founded, and backed a new one in the election of 2019 that the Democratic Party won anyway. He went into exile in South Africa in 2021 with charges of illegal firearms possession and money laundering against him at home. He returned in September 2024 and campaigned against Masisi. He saw the Democratic Party lose power in October 2024 for the first time in fifty-eight years to the opposition coalition, which he had backed. The charges were dropped in 2025. He is the country's most unusual former president, the one who broke his own father's party.
- Lived: 1953 CE – ?
- Nationality: Botswanan
- Roles: president, general, politician
