The topics that remain foremost in our minds have stayed pretty much the same for quite some time now. While we would prefer entirely new challenges, the truth is, we cannot. We keep talking about the level of poverty, unemployment, limited business funding opportunities, and inflation. All these things continue to shape how we live our lives. They are not abstract concepts or just topics of discussion. They continue to impact us daily. The question is why is it so difficult to defeat at least just one of our problems? Could it be because we keep applying the same tactics and hoping for a different outcome? If that’s the case, what does it says about our mindsets and what do we need to do about it? Behind the cost of living crisis that Batswana are facing now is a crisis of government, made all the more severe by the mindset of Batswana themselves. It is said that when you hit rock bottom, the only way left for you to go is up.
Many would agree that our country is pretty close to rock bottom. We must treat our current socio-economic trouble as a wake-up call, and immediately address our country’s structural inefficiencies and injustices. As the cost of living crisis in our country gets more acute, policymakers at the government enclave would need to take difficult but necessary steps to turn things around. But they cannot do that successfully when the nation is divided. They cannot do that when the nation does not share a common dream similar to the American Dream. The term “American dream” was coined in a best-selling book in 1931 titled Epic of America. The author James Truslow Adams described it as “that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement. The American dream was aided by several factors that gave the United States a competitive advantage over other countries.
Homeownership and education are often seen as paths to achieving the American dream. While the definition of the American Dream has changed to mean different things to different generations, it’s undoubtedly part of the American ethos, and likely always will be. The same can be said about our first-ever Vision 2016. I have never seen or read a beautiful national document like that one. In my small corner, I wish we could still be striving to achieve some if not all the goals set in our Vision 2016. Vision 2016 came about when our then leader, Sir Ketumile Masire (MSRP) realised that maintaining the kind of society and the kind of government that serve all the people, consistent with principles of justice, fair play and opportunity does not happen by itself.
In respect and honour of visionary leaders like the late Masire, we must work together as a nation to produce a moment we can all look back at, and be proud of, in the next decades two or three decades. A moment that will at the bare minimum, mark the foundation of an equal society, a united and proud nation that we all yearn for.
A society whose members are free to dream and become exactly what they envision not the one whose survival depends on bootlicking. Our power to find solutions to current socio-economic problems lies in ending and healing the divisions despite our political and ideological differences. It lies solely on a proud and united nation. We cannot be proud of people who are focused on enriching themselves at the expense of the masses. We cannot be proud that some of our people are stuck at the lower end of the economic end. A united nation is a kind that fights poverty and greed together. A united nation pulls together and does not have one group living in gated communities while the other group wonders where a loaf of bread will come from. To say such a setting is a crisis will be an understatement. But even if we were to lower it to the level of a crisis we still need to do something about it.
Not just talk. It has become a norm that in every crisis the phrase “never waste a good crisis” pops up. The cost of living crisis that we are facing as a nation is no exception to this. The phrase goes as far back as the days of Winston Churchill’s “never let good crises go to waste,” when he argued that the United Nations would never have existed without World War II. Churchill had a point and so do the many people who bring in these words today. It is often in times of crisis, high stakes, and urgency that people tend to exhibit better behaviors that are focused on clear objectives that count. For instance, lately, a good number of Batswana have shown huge interest in trying their lack of enterprising. Many of them are hungry not just for success but also for survival. There is high motivation amongst Batswana to end the days in which they were just economic spectators. They now want to be players.
Courtesy first of Covid 19 and now the economic crisis, many Batswana have taken their hunger to the streets to try their luck in catering and eatery businesses. Surely that approach is unsustainable but we all know that it is currently the only option available to them, thanks largely to the social injustice that has been going on for some time now. Our social injustice, particularly involving the unfair distribution of opportunities, is a huge factor behind the fractured society that Covid-19 and later European war-sponsored high inflation found us under. This divided society that we live in now can only be united if we make use of the crisis before us. We are at a point where a majority of the indigenous citizens know their economic status and a sizeable number of them, more especially in urban areas know what they need to do to over their economic crisis. Those in power have the option to guide the nation towards utilisation of the crisis or the usual path of missing opportunities. If they want this nation to miss economic growth opportunities, they just need to make sure that the government enclave has the usual conflicting goals that confuse and eat up the majority of our resources.
They just simply need to keep initiatives, capabilities, strategies, and teams siloed so the usual bottlenecks, communication breakdowns, slow decision-making, and poor handovers remain in place. But if they want this nation to make use of this crisis, they need to develop a national Innovation Game Plan. They also need to make sure that it is as safe as possible for Batswana – of all walks, to speak up, raise concerns, or bring up errors where they are picked without necessarily labeling them anti-government or negative. In this era of knowledge and the gig economy, the higher the quality of information shared between those governed and those governing, the better the quality of decisions that will be made. The #Bottomline is that we cannot win if we remain divided but we can also not unite if we cannot appreciate and accommodate diversity.
