Does this man look like a threat?

It took seven hours to wreck Kenneth Good's life, compromise his university's autonomy and expose Botswana's democratic myth. But he still drinks to a bright future

At about midday on May 31, I was taken by two men from inside the portals of the High Court in Lobatse, Botswana, and bundled into a waiting Volvo. Justice Sapire had just concluded his judgment, rejecting my appeal against being declared a prohibited immigrant (PI), and I was trying to consult with my lawyers about our reaction. The two men wore plain clothes and did not identify themselves. We drove at high speed around the town and then across the countryside as they tried, gleefully and purposefully, to shake off any pursuit by my lawyers, a senior Australian diplomat and journalists. They had even refused to tell Peter Scott, first secretary at the High Commission in Pretoria, where they were taking me, although it was his diplomatic responsibility to ensure my safety.

We circled towards Kanye, doubled and trebled back on our tracks, and arrived at something called the International Police Enforcement Academy, where we waited on the grass for about an hour. I was then placed in the back of a barred police wagon and bumped at high speed over rough roads to the Ramotswa station. We arrived shortly after 3pm. I was made to remove my shoes, watch and other belongings. I was fingerprinted four times, and put into a cell without light or furniture other than a sandwich-thick mattress on the concrete floor.

Twilight was approaching when Scott caught up with me. We returned to my house in Gaborone, where I was given ten minutes to put some underwear into a bag and bid farewell to my home of the past 15 years. My devoted housekeeper was crying. My 17-year-old daughter, Clara, was kept from me. I was unable to speak properly with my lawyers or waiting friends. Still accompanied by Scott, with hasty words of sympathy from reporters and airline personnel surrounding me, I was put on the 7pm flight to Johannesburg. Within seven hours, my life and work in Botswana were destroyed.

Things had gone better when Ian Smith, former Prime Minister of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), declared me a PI in 1973. The year before, I had gone to the university in what is now Harare, where my students were enthusiastic to study subjects such as peasant revolution and the recent wars of liberation in Algeria and Kenya. Zimbabwe's own freedom struggle had begun seriously by December 1972, and when students went on strike over campus conditions in mid-1973, the Smith Government responded with teargas, police dogs and wide-scale detentions. My department resolved not to resume teaching until our students were either charged or released. Just before the campus was due to reopen, I and the two other foreigners in the department were given five days to leave. This was something of an accolade. We joined a growing list of distinguished academics and journalists declared PIs by the Rhodesian Government. For Smith, we were useful examples to others to stay in line, but we were allowed to finalise our affairs and depart with our belongings, including research materials. Our expulsion proceeded in an oddly "civilised" way.

It is, by contrast, an absurdity for Botswana's President Festus Mogae to have declared me a "threat to national security". "Me and what army?" as the cartoonist in the newspaper Mmegi asked. I am a member of no organisation other than the University of Botswana. I am 72, and the father of Clara and three other adult daughters. Exactly how I undermined the well-equipped security apparatus of Botswana is still unclear to me.

The function of a professor is to profess, to disseminate knowledge when possible, and I tried to do this in my professional and social capacities, speaking to civic groups and to journalists when asked to do so. But in doing so, I have apparently come into conflict with the powers of the presidency.

In Botswana, sovereignty lies with the president rather than with Parliament or the people, as in other democracies. As Ian Kirby, Botswana's Attorney General, said in early May, to be declared a PI by the president is "a one-sided action that cannot be challenged in court". Herein lies a problem that Kirby's accurate statement ignores. The president is expected to make such a determination on grounds he deems reliable. Such powers suit a Colonel Gaddafi or President Robert Mugabe, but sit uneasily with the leader of a liberal democracy. An autocratic decision, influenced perhaps by no one, is inherently irrational, a clear act of non-accountability within a purportedly democratic society. This is a tendency, latent but always present, within Botswana's politics.

Those who have known me longest in Botswana mostly work alongside me in the department of political and administrative studies. Two senior colleagues have been closely associated with me since the early 1980s, when we were at the University of Zambia together. Others have been associates since I arrived in Gaborone in 1990. So as I prepared for my High Court hearing to determine whether I could remain in Botswana, I made a formal statement to my departmental board. I pointed out that these people possessed unique knowledge of my character and disposition, reliable information that the President needed. I therefore invited members of the board to make this available. But for reasons best known to themselves, they chose not to do so. Silence prevailed among those most able to speak. While the Academic Staff Union and the Student Representative Council expressed support and solidarity and many individuals voiced warm sympathy, no formal governing body at the university intervened on my behalf. The institution's independence and autonomy suffered a setback.

The judiciary in Botswana is at a crossroads: whether to uphold presidential predominance to the letter of the constitution or to support the furthering of free and critical speech latent in the spirit of the fundamental law. Before he stalwartly maintained the legal status quo on May 31, Justice Sapire had entertained individual freedoms when asking counsel why I was being declared a PI after 15 years and after my university contract had been renewed after thorough vetting in December. Justice Marumo touched on it too, on February 19, when he not only stopped my deportation but also instructed immigration and security not to harass me as my appeal went forward.

The media in Botswana are already engaged in this debate. When President Mogae took umbrage at a critical story in the Botswana Guardian , a subsequent High Court decision declared in the journalist's favour and stated that a critical press was vital for democracy.

If ambivalencies exist in the judiciary, and the media are firmly supportive of free speech, comparative international jurisprudence favours the latter, too. In addition, 48 per cent of voters, by supporting a then weak and divided opposition in October 2004, seemingly voted for political change. The broad circumstances seem promising.

As for myself, I wish to return to fulfil my contract at the University of Botswana until the end of 2006, which would coincide with Clara's matriculation. I would like to continue my teaching and research and consider further Botswana's possible transition to a rights-based democracy. I recall the final-year student who, as she left my office in April, turned back and said, "We all love you, Prof."

These are interesting times. If the opposition can unite as a credible alternative government, Botswana could become the near miracle that its rulers much too prematurely claimed it to be.

Kenneth Good is professor of political studies at the University of Botswana.