If anyone on this continent should understand how real diplomacy works, it’s Ian Khama.

After all, he is the son of Sir Seretse Khama, Botswana’s founding president. His father did not just practice diplomacy; he practically built his country out of it. He steered a newly independent, landlocked nation through a deeply hostile region dominated by apartheid South Africa and white-minority Southern Rhodesia. For his first eleven years in office, Botswana had no standing army, relying almost entirely on diplomatic back channels to preserve its security and sovereignty.

Sir Seretse could not afford to recklessly run his mouth and make enemies. His survival strategy was diplomacy—he knew when to talk, when to negotiate, and above all, how to preserve relationships with his neighbours to keep his people safe and protect the nation’s hard-won independence.

And that diplomacy is exactly what earned him his knighthood in 1966. Queen Elizabeth II did not honour him for military conquest; she recognised a leader who had secured Botswana’s independence without shedding a single drop of blood. In other words, Sir Seretse Khama was a knight of diplomacy.

His eldest son, Ian Khama, inherited that legacy. He is not a novice observer commenting from the sidelines. He is a former president who grew up under the wing of an astute diplomat and understands exactly how relations between states are ordinarily managed. And it is precisely why his recent conduct feels less like a political disagreement and more like an act of diplomatic vandalism.

In Botswana’s Ntlo ya Dikgosi—the country’s House of Chiefs and the upper chamber of Parliament—Ian Khama publicly described Zambia’s President Hakainde Hichilema as “Africa’s newest dictator,” and subsequently repeated that attack in media interviews.

This is one of the most serious accusations that can be levelled against a democratically elected foreign leader. Such a charge demands evidence.

So, where is it?

Zambia is not governed by a military junta like Burkina Faso. It has not abolished elections. Opposition parties continue to operate, independent courts continue to function, and Parliament continues to sit. The country’s democratic institutions remain intact. The nation recently abolished the death penalty, expanded free education to make it a right for every child, and secured a seat on the United Nations Human Rights Council.

Khama knows better than most that describing Zambia as a “dictatorship” is not supported by facts. As a former president who spent ten years in office, he knows exactly what a democratic government looks like. More importantly, he knows that serious diplomatic grievances are meant to be handled through formal channels—government to government, president to president, foreign minister to foreign minister—behind closed doors.

Bypassing those channels was a deliberate choice. He did not abandon diplomatic protocol because he forgot it; he abandoned it because quiet backchannels don’t command the spotlight, generate headlines, or trend on social media.

Why does a former head of state need this kind of attention? And why is he willing to throw the President of Zambia under the bus to get it?

The answer has little to do with principle. It is driven by an agenda—one that is both deeply personal and politically convenient. The more Ian Khama speaks, the harder it becomes to believe this is a genuine fight for democratic values. Instead, his conduct exposes motives rooted in personal interests and regional politics, far removed from the state of democracy in Zambia.

The first clue lies in the gap between Khama’s public rhetoric and his private interests. State House has publicly stated that Ian Khama previously visited Lusaka to meet President Hakainde Hichilema privately to discuss his personal business interests. Those interests, according to media reports, centered on a lucrative gold mining licence he acquired during former President Edgar Lungu’s tenure—a licence that was subsequently cancelled as part of the new government’s broader review of previously awarded mining rights. Khama did not just lose a business deal; he lost a cash cow that was protected by his friendship with the former president.

Cut off from the lucrative commercial channels he enjoyed in Lusaka under the previous government, Khama had personal—and not principled—reasons to be dissatisfied with the new political order. Whether by coincidence or not, his most sustained and aggressive attacks on President Hakainde Hichilema emerged only after his business interests in Zambia were no longer protected.

Personal resentment on its own is just a private grievance. The question is how such grievances evolve into political campaigns. That is where the regional context becomes impossible to ignore.

Some leaders in the region—accustomed to dictating the political order beyond their borders—view President Hakainde Hichilema’s independent geopolitical stance as a direct threat. For these countries, some of which are firmly aligned with BRICS and deeply suspicious of American influence, Zambia’s deepening military and security cooperation with the United States is a breach of established spheres of influence. They are not just whispering about it in private; they have already pushed formal SADC resolutions aimed at blocking member states from hosting foreign military forces.

Simultaneously, they watch as Zambia reroutes its mineral wealth through the U.S.-backed Lobito Corridor to the Atlantic, bypassing traditional south-eastern routes. Faced with this shift in regional alignment, they did not need to confront President Hichilema directly. All they needed was a prominent and credible regional figure willing to amplify criticisms that aligned with their interests. Ian Khama proved perfectly suited to that role.

This is not a coalition built on shared principles; it is an alignment of interests. Ian Khama has become the most visible public face of an agenda that extends well beyond him. He gets an outlet for his personal grievances over lost commercial access in Zambia, while his regional backers get a proxy to publicly advance criticisms they prefer not to make themselves. By using a former head of state as a surrogate, these leaders can undermine Zambia’s shifting alliances without officially compromising their own diplomatic relations.

If Khama’s sudden defence of democracy were genuinely rooted in principle, one would expect the same level of outrage wherever democratic norms are threatened. Instead, his outrage is highly selective.

For someone posturing as the continent’s moral compass, why was he silent when international organisations documented war crimes in Cabo Delgado, Mozambique? Why did he have nothing to say about the 6,600 civilian deaths and 1.2 million people displaced by an insurgency that his own regional bloc, SADC, is actively fighting? He had business meetings in Maputo, but no words for the victims.

Where was his outrage when the M23 rebellion reignited in the eastern DRC, displacing millions and deepening one of Africa’s worst humanitarian crises? Or when Angola faced mounting criticism over restrictions on political freedoms and dissent?

The pattern is difficult to ignore. On some of the region’s most serious human rights and security crises, Khama’s voice was either muted or absent. But when the target is President Hakainde Hichilema, he suddenly becomes one of the loudest voices in Southern Africa.

That inconsistency is not the hallmark of principled leadership. Statesmen apply their principles consistently, regardless of who is affected. Selective outrage, by contrast, usually signals that something else is at work. The question Ian Khama has yet to answer is why Zambia inspires such passion, while so many other crises in the region failed to move him with the same urgency.

Look at his track record. In 2015, when foreign nationals were being killed in xenophobic attacks in South Africa, Khama did not condemn the violence. Instead, he defended the South African government at a regional summit, declaring that “South Africa can’t be looked at as the employment bureau for the region.”

Fast forward to the renewed wave of xenophobic violence in 2026. His fellow former presidents did not stay silent. Malawi’s Joyce Banda urged regional unity to protect the victims. Nigeria’s Olusegun Obasanjo condemned the attacks, recalling Nigeria’s support for South Africa during the anti-apartheid struggle. Thabo Mbeki publicly warned that the anger was dangerously misdirected.

Khama, meanwhile, said absolutely nothing. Not a condemnation. Not a statement of solidarity. Complete silence.

That silence raises uncomfortable questions. If Khama’s interventions are truly driven by principle, why did one of the most visible humanitarian crises in the region fail to provoke the same urgency he now displays toward Zambia?

The contrast is difficult to ignore. When the victims are poor immigrants searching for a better life, Khama has nothing to say. But when the target is a Zambian president who cancelled his gold mining licence, he suddenly finds his voice. That is not a moral crusade—that is a personal vendetta.

It brings us right back to the central question: Who is Ian Khama really speaking for? Because he is clearly not speaking for the voiceless. He is advancing interests that extend far beyond the democratic concerns he claims to champion.

To understand whose interests those are, you only need to look at the diplomatic record. Following President Hakainde Hichilema’s re-election in August 2026, a notable regional president not only skipped the inauguration but withheld the customary message of congratulations. It was an unprecedented double snub: for the first time in recent history, that nation neither sent its head of state to the ceremony nor extended a formal congratulatory message to Zambia.

The irony is hard to miss. The president in question is Ian Khama’s close ally, connected through a direct family link—Khama’s key associate being the sister-in-law of the president himself.

What we are witnessing increasingly resembles something larger than a simple dispute over democratic values. The same regional voices that appear uncomfortable with President Hakainde Hichilema’s independent geopolitical course are the very voices amplifying attacks on his leadership. Individually, these incidents may be dismissed as coincidence. Taken together, they form an unmistakable pattern.

For President Hakainde Hichilema, this hostility is simply the price of independence. Zambia has chosen to pursue its own strategic interests, cultivate its own partnerships, and make its own decisions. That inevitably unsettles those accustomed to exercising influence without challenge. Standing firm on sovereign interests within SADC, COMESA and the African Union is not isolation—it is self-respect. Being a reliable partner does not require political submission.

Because in the end, the real issue is not whether President Hakainde Hichilema is a dictator.

The real issue is that he has refused to be dictated to.