Ezulwini – Botswana President Duma Gideon Boko took time during his visit to the Kingdom of Eswatini to meet with Batswana living in the country, delivering a powerful and deeply personal address about imagination, faith and the future he is building for Botswana.
Boko was in Eswatini for His Majesty King Mswati III’s celebrations marking 40 years on the throne and his 58th birthday when he gathered his compatriots and spoke at length about the power of dreaming with purpose.
Drawing on a quote from British officer and author T.E. Lawrence, which he said his father made him read at a very young age, the president told his audience what kind of leader and dreamer he is. 
“All men dream. But not equally. Those who dream by night in the darkest recesses of their minds, wake up in the day to find that it was all vanity. But the dreamers of the day are dangerous men. Those who dream with their eyes wide open. For they may act on their dreams and make them possible,” Boko quoted.
He then turned that philosophy toward his own vision for the country.
“I’m a dreamer of the day who dreams with his eyes open. I dream because you can’t build what you can’t imagine. First you’ve got to imagine it. You’ve got to bring it into existence conceptually,” he said.
Boko told the gathering that imagination alone is not enough, and that the approach most people take toward their goals is fundamentally flawed.
“You must do something else which is not to believe you will get that which you have imagined. Don’t believe you will get it. It’s the wrong approach. Believe you already have got it. That’s how all these things work. It’s a very simple proposition, but very profound,” he said.
He connected this thinking directly to faith, stripping it down to what he described as its simplest form.
“This is what is actually called faith. This is what it is. And it’s simple, blessed, shorn of all the frills. This is what faith is about. And prayer is not asking and expecting to get. Prayer is connecting in consciousness with that which has already been created,” Boko said.
He went further, saying that God has already created everything that exists, and that the task of human beings is simply to connect with what has already been made available.
“God will not come back to create anything. He has created everything. He has not left anything behind. It’s up to you to connect with that part of creation that is positive that he has already created,” he said.
Turning to his vision for Botswana, Boko was clear about the kind of country he is working toward and refused to entertain a lesser picture.
“We imagine a spectacularly different Botswana. Of robust growth and growth that is inclusive. That’s what we imagine. And we operate from a level of consciousness where we’re not alienated from that Botswana. We’re not waiting for it to happen. It is manifesting,” he said.
He closed with a message of resilience, telling Batswana in Eswatini that whatever difficulties the country faces at present are only temporary.
“Whatever realities confront us now, they are only temporary and transient. They are a fading reality, making way for the real, which is what we’ve imagined and we must imagine together,” Boko said.
