The coronavirus pandemic continued to take a serious toll on both human life and the economy during the course of this year. Because of our small population, almost every one of us, knows someone who fell ill, lost a relative or friend. The education of our children also suffered heavily as schools were shut down for long periods of time.
Beyond the loss of lives, many people also lost their sources of livelihoods including regular jobs because of restrictions which quite understandably, had to be imposed to fight the pandemic. In the process of fighting the pandemic, we of course committed mistakes because we did not know what we were dealing with and invariably erred on the side of caution. Now that we have vaccines in sufficient quantities, it is safe to assume that the era of hard lockdowns that we endured in April 2020 is behind us for good.
It makes sense therefore to use the Christmas break not only to rest and spend time with family but reflect on the way forward to reclaim both our lives and economy from the ravages of the coronavirus. It is a time for the government in particular, to reassess its role in our lives. Should we have government continue to permeate almost every aspect of our lives and thereby smother ingenuity and hard work? What are the benefits of government sometimes doing nothing and just staying out of the way? Shouldn’t we realise that staying out of the way is also an option? In other words doing nothing is sometimes a good solution as opposed to ill-advised government interventions.
Would it not serve us well for government and its bureaucracy to realise that contrary to popular belief, a perpetual and relentless engineering of society does little to propagate prosperity in the long run. Similarly, a public policy posture that sees foreigners and foreign things alike as enemies of Botswana’s economic development, is unwise.
Let us pray therefore that this holiday season of Christmas, marks a time for our leaders to break away from the hubris that seems to characterise many of their actions. This past week was a case in point; I watched some of our cabinet ministers on TV, where they announced plans to ban the imports of vegetables in January 2022. Sometimes it is as if they have discovered a new school of economics regarding import substitution. The only trouble is that they haven’t shared with us how and where a policy focused solely on replacing imports with local products worked. You get a sense that we have to believe them because they say so and are in government! Once again they didn’t bother to talk about promoting export competiveness. Their focus as always, was on the politically easy stuff of banning goods from other countries instead of selling of sending goods in the opposite direction as exports. And that seems to be the policy plank of government.
The interviewer for example, asked the two ministers whether they were not worried about any underlying risks to their decision to ban imports with respect to supply shortages that may occur or a surge in substandard quality products. Instead, hubris once again came to the fore and trumped reason. In a typical political posture, the ministers painted a rosy, risk free picture. Viewers were made to believe that there would be no issues with supply, quality and price. It was, if you like, a case of viewers being asked to engage in a suspension of disbelief.
To his credit, the representative of the horticultural cooperative on the other hand acknowledged, because he lives in the real world, that we should expect initial teething problems related to production. There would be issues with inputs especially the quality of seeds. He understood it even if it was unwitting, that there are such things as unintended consequences of public policy. There are tradeoffs and in to pretend that all will be hunky and dory is to do a great disservice to the public, especially consumers.
With that, I wish you a Merry Christmas!
