If you had gone to sleep in Botswana 10 years ago and woke up this year, you would be excused for assuming you were in the wrong country. While a decade provides an ample window for change in any country, the transformation here has still been immense.
For years, Botswana has been held up as a model of democratic governance and social stability in Africa. It has been able to offer its citizens social benefits unusual on the continent, such as free health care and education. But now perceptions, both internally and abroad, are rapidly shifting.
The opposition, for a long time led by the Botswana National Front (BNF), has been more vibrant than others in Africa. Now with the Botswana Movement for Democracy (BMD) growing in stature and an opposition coalition a work in progress, Botswana’s political dynamics have changed. As the opposition grows more teeth, discontent with the political order under the besieged ruling Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) government is rising.
Monkagedi Dithlokwa, 52, a fruit vendor at the station in Gaborone, is among the growing number of people disillusioned with life under the current order. “Ian Khama is authoritarian and doesn’t listen,” he muses.
That disillusionment is repeatedly finding expression as more Batswana chafe under the reality of the soaring cost of living. For many, the conviction is growing that their country, ‘the Switzerland of Africa’, is heading the way of many African countries.
While the political establishment blames the global financial crisis and the current fragility in the world’s economy for the rising hard social times, Batswana are increasingly unwilling to buy this.
“How is anyone supposed to live on P2 500 a month?” complains pre-school teacher, Emma Mmerike.
The official unemployment rate is running at 25 percent, but trade unions and opposition parties believe the real rate is higher.
Earlier this year, simmering discontent spilled over into industrial action, leading to an eight-week work stoppage by public service workers. Easily the deepest social unrest the country has had to deal with for many years, it brought public service delivery to its knees.
Demonstrations and strikes by tens of thousands of public sector employees began with demands for a 16 percent pay rise, but other issues soon enough rose to the fore. The strike dissipated, crushed by mass layoffs and a more heavy-handed police intervention than previously experienced in the country.
In the event, civil servants were awarded a 3 percent pay rise, but given the level of discontent that still prevails, there is a sense that Khama’s government secured a victory at a heavy cost.
The trade unions see President Khama increasingly clamping down on workers’ rights, and have taken legal action against new measures such as the state’s right to end deductions of union fees from state workers’ pay. Such moves act as a fetter on opposition activity, undermining democracy in Botswana, unions complain.
Last week, the issue of the rising cost of living threatened to bring members of the Botswana Federation of Trade Unions (BFTU) into the streets for protest. Unhappy with rising prices of basic goods, stagnant wages and erosion of workers’ purchasing power, their discontent tapped into the current gloom workers face.
BFTU publicity secretary, Edward Tswaipe, said in a statement that despite the spike in food, accommodation, fuel and public transport costs, employers and government continue to use the global economic crisis as a pretext to suppress wages.
While the protest did not come off, it still managed to touch off concern about its potential effect if it had been pulled off, given the perception that the recent strike had done little to achieve moral victory for workers.
“Let’s just hope history doesn’t repeat itself,” commented Thato Babusi from Gaborone. “I would have advised to try next financial year as you saw earlier with the 16 percent issue that the cows are out of milk.”
Yet from the BFTU statement, it was clear the protest threat was about a wider range of issues. The marches, planned countrywide, would target outsourcing and the denial of freedom of association, inadequate protection, anti-union discrimination and victimisation of employee representatives.
According to the union, freedom of association and collective bargaining are the only sustainable routes out of poverty. 
“BFTU believes that there cannot be decent work without workers’ rights to organise and bargain,” secretary general, Gadzani Mhotsha said. The BFTU said it condemns the constitution of Botswana, labour laws, institutions and dispute resolution mechanisms for failing to offer adequate protection against anti-union discrimination and victimisation of employee representatives by employers and government.
Meantime, more people are bristling in the face of the Khama factor ÔÇô the “authoritarianism” Gaborone fruit vendor Dithlokwa refers to. When the BDP’s secretary-general Kentse Rammidi plunged his party into a crisis by resigning recently, he bemoaned a lack of internal democracy and the “one-man-show” style of Khama. Rammidi’s action followed a move by Labour and Home Affairs Minister Peter Siele to declare teaching, veterinary services and diamond sorting to be essential services. This barred workers in those sectors from striking in the future.
But while the political establishment in ‘Africa’s Switzerland’ is under pressure with the ruling party often threatening to internally combust, Western diplomats still give positive assessments of its democracy, legal system and economy. The June visit of US First Lady Michelle Obama was seen as signal of Western support. Nevertheless, other diplomats in Gaborone express misgivings about the rising political and social tensions here.
Despite the sporadic unrest caused by the eight-week strike, the country’s economy rebounded in the second quarter, with growth at 9.6 percent. This growth spurt was powered mainly by the construction and mining sectors, which increased by 28.3 and 23.7 percent, respectively. The economy had contracted by 2.2 percent in the first three months of the year, but clawed itself back to a more familiar growth pattern. According to the African Development Bank, Botswana’s economy is forecast to grow by 6.9 percent.
This is more good news against the bad tidings of slipping citizen confidence for a country that in 2010 clawed its way back to its spot as the world’s biggest rough diamond producer by value, after it had slipped to second place in 2009.
According to statistics release by the Kimberley Process, a UN certified scheme, despite Russia producing more rough diamonds in 2010 at 34 million carats worth around $2.38 billion, Botswana’s 22 million carats mined in 2010 were worth around $2.59 billion — $210 million dollars more than Russia.
In 2009, Debswana mining company had slashed production due to the global economic downturn.
