Friday, February 7, 2025

Auditor General sucked into Government Enclave turf wars?

Pulane Letebele issues opinions for a living, but for a moment on Friday, she could hardly vocalize a “yes” or “no.”

The Auditor General was tongue tied when asked if she interviewed members of the Covid-19 Presidential Task Force before issuing an adverse audit opinion about them.

All she could muster was a “I cannot discuss that” and a sigh before hanging up on me. From then on, she would not take my calls.

The Sunday Standard wanted to establish if what appeared to be an omission of procedure in the audit impaired her ability to support the adverse audit opinions she expressed in the report.

An omitted auditing procedure is defined as one the auditor considers necessary in the circumstances existing at the time of the audit but which was not performed.

This was after the Sunday Standard discovered that although about a third of Mrs Letebele’s report details gross mismanagement of the Covid-19 relief fund and coordination failure by the Presidential Task Force, no member of the task force is listed among the people she interviewed.

The Coordinator of the Covid-19 Presidential Task force Dr Kereng Masupu is not only the face of Botswana’s fight against the pandemic, but is also charged with coordinating the country’s response to the pandemic.

Compiling a Covid-19 audit report without his input risked reducing the whole exercise into to a clown show. The Auditor General took the risk anyway.

Masupu who confirmed that the Auditor General never interviewed him before formulating an adverse audit opinion about him, his charges and his response to the pandemic, stopped short of dismissing the audit as a sham. “Maybe that is the standard adopted by Botswana auditors”, he said.

Dr Masupu was being sarcastic. What he was trying to communicate was that this is not an audit-— or at least it doesn’t appear to be following the generally accepted standards for one. Audit best practice required the Auditor General to have interviewed Dr Masupu to get his side of the story before issuing an adverse audit opinion against him and his team.

Dr Masupu was generous in his response. Other members of the Covid-19 Presidential Task Force who spoke on condition of anonymity said calling this exercise an audit “lends it an appearance of legitimacy it simply does not deserve.” One dismissed it as a “fraudit.”

                                                              AUDIT UNDER FIRE

Botswana Building Society (BBS) Head of Marketing & Communications who was seconded to the Covid-19 Presidential task team, Sipho Showa has filed a written complaint with the Auditor General pointing out that reference to him in the audit report was “incorrect”.

He states “the Report contains an allegation that one of the COVID-19 Task Team members unduly earned fees from the COVID-19 Task Force. While my name has not been specifically mentioned, including in the press reports, I am aware that it refers to my situation. This position is incorrect and to the contrary, I am owed fees for professional services to the COVID-19 Task Force as is explained below,” the PRO says in the letter. He says the letter from his employer consenting to his providing services to the Task Force makes no reference to remuneration.”

It emerges from the letter that the Auditor General got her facts wrong because she failed to interview Showa, his bosses at BBS and the Coordinator of the Task Force.

The Auditor General’s report turns on a single sentence under the sub-heading, “Coordination of the COVID-19 Activities.” The audit opinion states that, “There was inadequate coordination and management of COVID-19 activities.” Coordination and management of Covid-19 activities was assigned to the Presidential Task Force. As it turns out, the Auditor General reached this opinion without interviewing neither the Coordinator of the Task Force nor his team.

The audit report states that the coordination failure was “evident during the 21-day State of Public Emergency, which effected on 2 April 2020 where decisions for opening, closure and reopening of workplaces and suspension or scaling down of work activities across various sectors of the economy became a challenge.

For example, during the first lockdown, only essential workers were allowed movement, however public transport was ceased; hence, people without privately owned vehicles became stranded. There was no national preparedness and response strategy, except MoHW Preparedness and Response Plan that would have guided an integrated approach to promoting all the different dimensions of response towards COVID-19.” This was the second time in one page that the Auditor General was waxing lyrical about the MoHW Preparedness and Response Plan “that would have guided an integrated approach to promoting all the different dimensions of response towards COVID-19.”

In the opening paragraph she states “the Government of Botswana, through the Ministry of Health and Wellness, established a comprehensive operational framework for the preparedness plan and response strategies for the COVID-19 outbreak. The framework was drawn to demonstrate how the Ministry of Health and Wellness intended to prepare and respond to the pandemic.”

The Auditor General slammed the coordination and management of Botswana’s response to the response and in the same breath lauded the MoHW Preparedness and Response Plan “that would have guided an integrated approach to promoting all the different dimensions of response towards COVID-19.” The long and short of the Auditor General’s opinion is that, had Botswana followed the MoHW plan instead of the Presidential Task Force’s strategy, the country would have dealt better with the pandemic.

Task Force members are however reading something sinister into the Auditor General’s opinion, that she has been sucked into the marathon turf war between MoHW and the Covid-19 Presidential Task Force.

                            THE TURF WAR

Faced with the Covid-19 emergency, President Mokgweetsi Masisi moved swiftly to consolidate the civil service fire-power, seeking to inject new people — especially ones with the math and science skills he considered lacking in senior civil servants. The president literally created the COVID-19 Presidential Task Team on the fly. He pulled together a high-powered group of suits to help fight the pandemic and anointed them with the same access and some insiders say authority as his Permanent Secretary to the President (PSP).

The former PSP Elias Magosi and Task Team members who all had easy access to the president found themselves pushing and shoving each other at Masisi’s door. And they took opposing views on major issues – a dynamic that is playing itself out in the government’s response to the pandemic.

Covid-19 constant crisis management apparently consolidated Masisi’s relationship with the Covid-19 Presidential Task Team, much to the chagrin of Botswana’s establishment men. There was a sense that this new “crisis structure” had evolved beyond the initial brief to become something of a kitchen cabinet to President Masisi. There were growing fears that it was marginalizeing the cabinet and civil service and reducing the transparency of government decision making.

For some time, the Coordinator of the COVID-19 Presidential Task Team Dr Kereng Masupu, his deputy Professor Mosepele Mosepele and the then Director of Health Services Dr Malaki Tshipiyagae were the three most visible faces of Botswana’s fight against coronavirus. However, the two outsiders who made up the Covid-19 Presidential task team and the Director of Health Services fitted awkwardly with the permanent government bureaucracy. The fight against Covid-19 tended to elevate Tshipiyagae above the then MoHW Permanent Secretary, Solomon Sekwakwa, while Dr Masupu and Prof Mosepele who embodied a new and powerful layer of bureaucrats with a direct line to the president were special appointees whose positions did not exist in the civil service establishment register.

But when Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Health and Wellness, Solomon Sekwakwa was fired last year because of what he claimed was a vicious and orchestrated campaign by his Director of Health Services, Malaki Tshipiyagae, this was a juicy subordinate-from-hell story which quickly became a metaphor for the Presidential Covid-19 Task Team’s broader tensions with Botswana’s much vaunted civil service.

In an instructive anecdote, Sekwakwa told Sunday Standard how the task team wanted him to unfairly dismiss a certain technical officer from the ministry. “I ignored that and continued with my work,” he said. He believes that is what cost him his job.

With the former Permanent Secretary’s bitter exit, a feud that had been brewing behind closed doors spilled into the open. It was a startling break with decorum for the civil service, in which disputes are worked out privately and officials like Sekwakwa shun the limelight.

The “permanent government” layer of bureaucrats who stay on from president to president, burrowed deep in ministries across the government enclave started pushing back against the Covid-19 Presidential Task team.

Dr Masupu, Prof Mosepele and Dr Tshipiyagae found themselves fighting a bruising turf war with the government enclave’s powerful (Performance Improvement Committee) PIC Force headed by former Permanent Secretary to the President (PSP). Initially, leaks were the primary way that entrenched bureaucrats, sought to undermine the task team.

Allegations that the Covid-19 Presidential Task Team was the government enclave bully pulpit made the trio, especially Masupu and Tshipiyagae lightning rods of controversy in Masisi’s new inner circle, readymade-villains for critics who accused them of riding roughshod over the civil service.

Sekwakwa’s successor at the Ministry of Health and Wellness, Kabelo Ebineng was thrust into the trenches where he fought the PIC corner.

With the Ministry of Health and the PIC Force pushing back against the Presidential Task Force, Botswana’s Covid-19 response devolved into a power struggle. Inevitably, Dr Tshipiyagae again found himself fighting his new boss, Ebineng.

The PIC Force decided it was time to break up the party, and upped the ante in their fight against the Task Team. Ebineng and the former PSP demoted Tshipiyagae to a subordinate position of Consultant Surgeon at Princess Marina Hospital, reporting to the hospital Superintendent, and allegedly replaced him with one of their own.

Sekwakwa’s dismissal aside, the biggest coup for the Task Team, was probably President Masisi’s decision to give them absolute command in the fight against the pandemic, shunting the then Minister of Health and Wellness Dr Lemogang Kwape aside.

The President also withdrew the more than P2 billion Covid-19 budget from the Ministry of Health and gave it to the Covid-19 Procurement Unit with is part of the Covid-19 Task Team under the Office of the President. These structures report to the Covid-19 Presidential Task Force which is chaired by President masisi and has among its members ministers of health, finance and trade.

The Covid-19 Procurement Unit under the Office of the President had already started reversing and cancelling some questionable procurements made by MoHW when Ebineng stepped in and spoiled the party.

                   CLASH OF STRATEGIES

The former Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Health and Wellness defied President Masisi and refused to surrender the Covid-19 budget to the Covid-19 Presidential Task Force.

This was the epitome of the clash between the Presidential Task Force’s strategy and the MoHW Preparedness and Response Plan which in the Auditor General’s opinion “would have guided an integrated approach to promoting all the different dimensions of response towards COVID-19.”

The Covid-19 Procurement unit under the Office of the President teamed up with MoHW to close the Task Team out of Covid-19 appropriations.

The Sunday Standard has in its possession a letter from the Covid-19 Presidential Coordination Task Team to Ebineng, complaining that the former Permanent Secretary had elbowed them out of Covid-19 appropriations.

The Sunday Standard investigation team has raised another letter from the Task Team to the former PSP dated 7th March 2021 in which they complained that, “there is concern that procurement around testing, contact tracing/surveillance resources continues to be done without the input and advise of the Coordination Task Team worth millions of pula. Previously, MOHW would put in requests to the Coordination Task Team to advise on the efficacy, burn rate and need of the envisaged procurement, including price. Thus, clarification of budget control to the Coordination Office would be helpful.”

The feud between Masisi’s Covid-19 Presidential Task Team and Botswana’s entrenched bureaucracy carries echoes of the Trump administration’s deep state.  As the rift widens, the acronym PIC Force has come to mean something sinister to some members of the Covid-19 Presidential Task Team. More than just signifying a frustrated bureaucracy, it conjures a secret illuminatus of bureaucrats determined to sabotage the country’s response to the pandemic.

The paranoia is hardly surprising. When it comes to the endless number of more mundane policies and decisions farther from the spotlight, The Covid-19 Presidential Task Team has met with resistance — some of it subtle, some of it not. And the Auditor General’s report is viewed as just another salvo in the running turf war between the Covid-19 Presidential Task Force and Botswana’s entrenched bureaucracy.

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