In an exclusive and interesting chat granted The SUN, Chief Dr. John Mokube has highlighted the need to get all chiefs on board the South West train, with vision to foster peace, serenity and development in the region. Touching on innovations in the upcoming South West Cultural festival, the leader draws the line between the administration and chiefs, politics and chieftaincy, land grabbing and the dignity of the chieftaincy institution. He spoke to The SUN’s CEO/Managing Editor, Wasso Norbert Binde.
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Thank you His Majesty Chief John Mokube, president of the South West Chief’s Conference elected in February 2025. We want to thank you for finding time to grant this exclusive interview to The SUN Newspaper.
Thank you very much Mr. Wasso. We know you are part of us and you are interested in our afffairs. I am willing to respond to any question.
-You have been on the seat for four months now. What appreciation can you make of it?
It is a little less than four months because we took office on the 22nd of February.
The appreciation we make of it is challenging to have this kind of title, President of South West Chiefs Conference. In theory, I should be presiding over more than 2000 chiefs in the South West region. In practice, it is much less than that. We are still campaigning for our peers to join us. In every other undertaking, not everybody sees a reason to join from the beginning. It is pretty challenging. First to bring many people on board. What makes a leader is the following. If you don’t have a following, you are not a leader. So that is one of our major problems and it is in our project. The other thing is the amount of light it has brought on me as a person. I am a bit amused because I am a self-evasive person but I have to cope. Interraction with the administration too is not very easy you know, somehow the Colonialists left this notion of auxiliaries of the administration. If you look at it, not that it is an offensive term, it is just the way people have perceived it. Auxilary is really a big thing.
To be supporting somebody, it means the person has need of you, especially in times of difficulties. So we are auxilaries, but because of the negative connotation it has had over the years, we don’t like it very much. That also is a problem. Our relationship with some of the administrators, not all. And getting our peers to accept this word of auxilary is not very easy. Some are very defensive, so you have to tamper this reaction because as a leader you have to do some balancing. I am a medical doctor by profession, so my mission usaually is appeasement. It is healing. So if you have to follow some of these things, it is quite challenging but interesting.
Why are some of the chiefs reluctant to join the association?
I think it is a matter of education. I think you have to take the merit of the South West chief of belonging to the hinterlands. Also the chieftancy institution, there are some little challenges. At present, it is a gathering of very big sophisticated people; Retired Magistrates, Doctors, Engineers, so this transition is not completed from a purely cultural and traditional concept to people who have been in school. That doesn’t make them better chiefs than the others but this compromise and linking the so-called emancipated and the cultural people. That is the main reason I see but there is a lot of interest in people joining.
Luckily some of us know you personally. You are a senior to us educationally and everything. We have come to know you as an independent minded person. This is not what one sees especially when you have to lead an association for chiefs. People think they have to be subservient to the government in power or the party in power. How are you going to manage all of this?
That is a difficult question. I pride myself in being independent and not being pushed around. Most of the people who know me know that is how I have been. Let me say that SWECC is not a political body. I just said earlier that the chiefs are not like the chiefs that were not educated. Many of the chiefs are highly educated and they can make their own impression.
They can decide where to go, so there is nothing in our Constitution like SWECC discipline. We have a code of conduct but note that it doesn’t extend to political leanings. People are free to join where they are. I will stand by myself. I respect my party, I respect my party discipline.
I will not go all out to influence anybody. Well I want my party to grow but I will not want to force any person because I am the leader of SWECC. I wouldn’t want any person to do that. The support and prayers of friends like you and other people have been able to navigate and to thread this very sensitive part of it but I wouldn’t change. I will stand by my person.
You come from Ndian, the same area like the Prime Minister. Is it an extra burden to you at this point in time?
We came from the same area gives me problems on both sides, positive and negative. The negative is that you may be perceived as leaning on the Prime Minister and everything comes from the Prime Minister. Obviously I am proud that he comes from my area. I have a duty to support him. It is a unique opportunity for Ndian to have a Prime Minister and the least thing I can give my Prime Minister is support. Let me end there.
Let us come to SWECC itself. You have been slightly four months on the saddle.This executive of SWECC, what are your main axis that you want to focus on, even though some people are saying the mandate is short. It is just two years. What are the main axis that you want to focus on that will make your mandate different from the others?
One of the main things is to increase awareness by other chiefs. So by the time I leave, if the number can double, that will be a great thing. So we shall have a bigger fighting and negogiating force.
The other thing is to try to draw this line between administration and the chiefs and also between politics and chieftancy. These are delicate issues. We intend to hold conversations within us chiefs so that people know that they are free to make choices but not to sacrifice the respect and dignity of the chieftancy.
The other thing is that we want to get many people from sleep about the South West, South West has a culture. It is the most populated area and so people turn to think that it has no specific culture.
It has a culture and we want to showcase it and make an inprint in the minds of who so ever that is observing us that South West has a culture and you may be aware of the first cultural festival that was organised last December 2024. There will be another on the 12th, 13th and 14 of December 2025. We have already launched it. Showcasing South West cultural identity and consolidating peace and entrepreneural consciousness. Like the theme says, we are going to showcase our identity. We want to continue to work for peace. If by the end of our mandate, one can move across the South West without fear of violence or something, that will be a huge achievement. We also want to narrow the space between administration and the chiefs. We want to be seen for what the intention is. Working together for our people. Apart from that we have this our cultural heritage complex. A flagship project of SWECC. I will be proud to take it to a level which will be marked by my own mandate.
The cultural festival; are you bringing in any innovation this year as compared to last year?
That is obvious because if today is not better than yesterday, then we haven’t made progress. Infact, let me say the first one, since we were just inaugurating, we didn’t reach all the people. It is a South West Cultural festival but it extends to all people living in the South West. We shall invite tribes and cultures from the South West that want to participate. That will be one innovation. The other innovation will be the reach out. Essentially it will be the same thing, bringing people together, getting deep into their culture, bringing their artifacts, whatever their great great fathers had. So one dimension will be transportation which is our limit. We have really old people about 70, 80 years coming to the festival and talking in the microphone how they saw this South West evolve from their birth till now.
There has been this cry from the administration that due to the crisis, a lot of chiefs have moved away from their palaces and chiefdoms and have been hammering for them to come back. What is the situation today by your own record?
By my record the situation has improved but we can’t say it is completely normal but it has greatly improved. Many places people couldn’t go back to, they have now gone back. By definition, a chief is a responsible person. If you are away from your population, there is something not right. The mission of a chief is to lead the population and you can’t lead them very well from a distance. Those clamouring that chiefs go back, I have seen chiefs go back and take the risk just for the sake of putting their people together. For example, schools, making people not to fear and to return to school. Making people continue to cultivate their farms and so on. We all regret the fact that many chiefs are out of their chiefdoms but I want to assure you that no chief is disconnected from his people. We have worked out mechanisms where the chief is not there but there are people there. From Ndian my own area, we call them Regents. People we have kept to assume the functions of leadership in our absence. In other areas, they are called Chairmen. But there is a mechanism. It is a government. We have our security network, we have our educational network, we have our communication network. We are thankful to God that a lot of progress has been made.
There is a recent fire storm generated by the order from an administrator where they were ordering chiefs to come and march for the 20th May. I don’t know how you felt about it! Is it one of the challenges you said you are facing from some administrators?
I don’t want to shy away from that question but let me begin from the point that if chiefs are run down, neglected or insulted, I feel bad because I am their leader. I am not here to inflame. As a leader, my problem is to bring peace because we are bound to work with the administration and I must also mention that I know that particular administrator from close quarters. He is a nice, welcoming and respectful man. I think there is a bit of misinterpretation of the intent of the administrator. So as the leader, after that, I have talked to the administrator and he is shocked by the reaction, so I want to play the role of appeasement. So my chiefs, some of them are rightfully inflamed because when you feel belittled especially in front of your people. I shared the outraged before I met the administrator. Now that I met the administrator and we had a cordial talk together, I think we better leave that for the past and look forward to the brighter future.
How powerful is the voice of SWECC?
I don’t know from what angle you want.
In terms of advocacy, how powerful is its voice heard by the governmentgovernment? Does the government easily react to its demands for the development of the South West and so on?
That is a tricky question. But how powerful we are, we are very very powerful. The Prime Minister just visited the South West region last week end. We can’t say everything in public but he gave the chiefs a special place. Former Prime Minister, Musonge came here for a political meeting. He himself acknowledged that we are a-political. Inspite of that, he invited us. He said it that the chiefs have a role to play in political awareness and consciousness. So SWECC has a lot of power like I told you. I went to the SDO who was involved in the time of misunderstanding and he received us respectfully. How can a nation run without chiefs? We are the frontline administrators. We are the front line security people. I don’t know how many people in a village the D.O sees in a year? My village is more than one thousand people, I don’t know if the D.O sees up to one hundred of my villagers.
So I see the one thousand and I stand a better chance to tell him this is how my village runs and if you put together all what the chief does in the South West, you will have a better perspective. We don’t shout out our greatness or power, it is obvious. No other administrator reaches the grass root like the chiefs. No other sees what we see or handles the problems we handle. From that perspective, it is very powerful. We also have to acknowledge that the power is recognised and that is why we have the House of Chiefs.
If it is another matter, we will have to add flesh as to what the House of Chiefs is suppose to do and to define the link between the House of Chiefs and the other components of the society. But to that concentration already to make a special space for chiefs, I think it is expression of power.
When you look at the Lamidos of the North and others and even the chiefs of the South West, I wish you saw the arrival of the Prime Minister! My colleagues of the House of Chiefs and I were the first to be received among the population.
I don’t know how much more power we require. We wouldn’t go on top of trees shouting power. I think we have enough power and every person has an interest. Government, administration they have an interest tapping into that power.
Now we have two main issues that have been eating like cancers. The chieftancy problems in the South West and this issue of land grabbing and so on. How do you people plan to reduce this constant chieftaincy rangling and some of the involvement in administration and so on? How are we going to reduce this, because it goes to reduce the perception of the chieftancy title that people have!
I don’t intend to have a magic solution but it is unfortunate because the law defines how chiefs are made by the law though we regret that it is very old (1977). But the law puts the selection of the chiefs in the hands of the villagers, the traditional council. There are king makers in every village and it should be left like that. There are poeple who keep aside the law for reasons. They think they are more educated or think they know more than what the village is proposing or they claim they are richer. All those are misconceptions.
As for the battle with the string attached between the administrators with the villages, it is unfortunate because administrators should know better. I think one of their functions is the wellbeing of their population.
There can’t be wellbeing if there is disgruntlement and strive between the people or the population so the administrators who do that should evaluate themselves and see how much they are worth to be called administrators.
Instead of uniting their people and bringing peace, letting their population evolve and develop, they bring strive, division and so on. I will not like to comment more on that, I just think that whoever is responsible, be it the administrators or the so-called elites who came from every place and want to despise them or some treacherous kingmakers too who sell their birth right.
I will leave it to themselves who have a conscience. My only regret is that the law should be followed strictly incase any of these parties go against the law.
The land issue; grabbing of land and auction by chiefs which some administrators are decrying!
I will not go deep into that, I will just say it is unfortunate. Any chief who wouldn’t think that if the father had sold the land he wouldn’t have had a land now, is a bit unfortunate.
I can only deploy the chiefs to think well and to remember that the world will not end with them, so they need to leave things for posterity. For administrators, I wouldn’t comment. There are many good administrators. There are a few who for reasons nobody understands behave the way we all know. You cannot use those few and pass them as the whole but they cause a lot of problems which I think the government should begin to look at it critically.
You talked of being received by the Prime Minister, you and the head of the House of Chiefs. I want to ask why those two bodies? The House of Chiefs and SWECC is so powerful, people hear alot about SWECC but since the House of Chiefs was put in place, it is true we have had some outburts from the president of the House of Chiefs who has been drawing a lot of errors from may be other quarters but apart from that, nothing tangible from the House of Chiefs. But you can say SWECC is moving, calls meetings, does things and so on. Is that dualism really necessary?
I don’t want to let myself to criticise government. I think the government had good intentions in creating the House of Chiefs. We of SWECC, we have a pretty good relationship with the House of Chiefs, both of us were understudying each other.
The House of Chiefs is only four or five years old, I bet even those in the House of Chiefs are still to know what their function is. I think we of SWECC should support the House of Chiefs and should give them advice. I wish they can take advice. We are their electorate. We decide who goes into the House of Chiefs. So I see it in a triangular way. If the government really intended to make the House of Chiefs, then it should really be worthy of representation. If the House of Chiefs is going to be representative of its chiefs, then it should have an interest of working with SWECC because SWECC is the majority.
We of SWECC, even as we watch both government action in the House of Chiefs, we should be circumspect if what we say goes right or wrong because we as chiefs, our first instinct is to acknowledge that everything was done in good faith.
As long as we haven’t really identified the bad fate, we should continue to live the good fate and we hope we can have this triangular discussion where each person is respectful of the opinion of the other.
I said it somewhere that the two years mandate, some people said it is short and you can’t achieve much. By the time you are introducing yourself to the administration and stakeholders, you realise that two years have pass. What is SWECC thinking?
That is a difficult question for me because many people feel that the time is short. It is obvious by the time you even put in place your work plan most of the time is gone, not to talk of contacting other stakeholders who you will need to realise this work plan.
This is my personal opinion, it is not the opinion of SWECC. If the time can be a little longer than that. We have legal advisers and we have a body which is the SWECC General Assembly who have in the past considered lengthening the mandate but as usual people have different interests and the majority was for and the little minority was against.
So since we are in a democratic body, we work in general by consensus. So all I can say is I will listen to my peers and I know most of them want the mandate extended. If they bring that to the floor, I will let them vote. I will abstain because I am the incumbent. So let it not be seen like I want an overdue prolongation.
What is SWECC doing about this crisis which has devastated the South West? What are you doing so this crisis can be put to an end? So we can go back to where we were? The Prime Minister gave a very hopeful message eventhough it was during a political meeting that the best days of the South West are still ahead. Do you buy into that?
As a Catholic, there is act of faith to hope. So I will add the act of faith. I will cherish the act of hope so that people don’t get desperate. With what the Prime Minister said, I don’t want to criticise him because he means well.
I will do all I can to help him achieve his perspective. For the crisis, we as the chiefs, I wish we could do better than we are doing. We try to put all the parties in our village. So when some go astray, it becomes extremely difficult to handle. But I can’t put security strategies in the open, we are putting the best we can so peace returns as soon as possible. It is so pitiful to see a giant of 16 years in class four primary school who has not gone to school. I think every person involved has come to the realisation that we need peace.
-Thank you Chief Dr. Mokube. Any last words?
We should have hope as indigenes of the South West. Let this hope come from us. We should not just sit down and wait for everything to be done for us. We want a self-reliant population, industrious people who go out to achieve. They don’t just sit down and want to get things. People who think positively not negatively, criticising things which they are not well informed about. I know all our peers have the same wish.
-Thank you very much
You are welcome