{"id":35315,"date":"2017-06-23T14:48:05","date_gmt":"2017-06-23T14:48:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/botswana-s-former-president-ketumile-masire-dies\/"},"modified":"2017-06-23T14:48:00","modified_gmt":"2017-06-23T14:48:00","slug":"botswana-s-former-president-ketumile-masire-dies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/botswana-s-former-president-ketumile-masire-dies\/","title":{"rendered":"Botswana&#8217;s former President Ketumile Masire dies aged 91"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>{Botswana has declared three days of national mourning after the death of former President Sir Ketumile Masire, aged 91.}<\/p>\n<p>Sir Ketumile, who led the country from 1980 to 1998, is credited with being the architect of the country&#8217;s famed stability, reports the AFP news agency.<\/p>\n<p>He was also involved in peace initiatives across Africa, including ending Mozambique&#8217;s long civil war.<\/p>\n<p>Botswana is one of Africa&#8217;s richest and most stable countries.<\/p>\n<p>Sir Ketumile became president after the death of Botswana&#8217;s first post-independence leader Sir Seretse Khama in 1980.<\/p>\n<p>He had served as the country&#8217;s first minister of finance and vice-president before becoming president, the Botswana government states.<\/p>\n<p>Sir Ketumile stepped down in 1998 after overseeing a period of strong economic growth based on the effective management of the Botswana&#8217;s vast diamond wealth.<\/p>\n<p>He was also involved in backing South Africa&#8217;s anti-apartheid movement and other independence struggles in the region.<\/p>\n<p>As an elder statesman he was involved in mediation efforts across Africa, including Kenya, Lesotho, Swaziland and the Democratic Republic of Congo.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"spip-document spip-document-21015 aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/jpg\/_96604581_masire.jpg\" alt=\"Sir Ketumile Masire - the &quot;architect&quot; of Botswana&#039;s stability\" \/><\/figure>\n<p>Source:BBC <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>{Botswana has declared three days of national mourning after the death of former President Sir Ketumile Masire, aged 91.} Sir Ketumile, who led the country from 1980 to 1998, is credited with being the architect of the country&#8217;s famed stability, reports the AFP news agency. He was also involved in peace initiatives across Africa, including [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[100],"byline":[249],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-35315","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-africa","byline-bbc"],"bylines":[{"id":249,"name":"BBC","slug":"bbc","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":104}],"contributors":[{"id":249,"name":"BBC","slug":"bbc","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":104}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35315"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35315\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35315"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=35315"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=35315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}