The performance of boys and girls in our school declines on a yearly basis, families are less stronger with the hope for children making and getting jobs; the morale of teachers and educators is at a record low; the future of our education and its ability to prepare our young people for a robust global economy that can churn real jobs and will require them to effectively participate at all its levels, become the best they can be and thus help the nation cannot be guaranteed.
Government is intransigent on engaging teachers and educators on how to deal with the curriculum, class size, teacher welfare and their emoluments. Botswana continues to fail to create permanent jobs for citizens especially the youth. Between 65-70% of the population is below fourty (40) and most of them are unemployed. The unemployment rate currently stands at just above 20%. Youth empowerment schemes in place are failing to yield the expected positive results. There is a mismatch between the amount of money disbursed and the success rate of projects. There is poor monitoring of projects, but no one is ever held accountable. University graduates are rooming the streets. All those who failed Form 3 and Form 5 are in a more precarious situation as they do not have any skills or academic qualifications that they can use to get jobs. These are the people who are now employed as casual labourers under the Ipelegeng programme, a programme which is not sustainable in the long run. It is a programme that does not give anyone skills that they can use to move out of the poverty trap as people are employed to cut grass and sweep the streets. They are paid P400 at the end of the month, laid off for a month or more to give others a chance and are then rehired for another month.
Health care is punctuated by wanting delivery of good quality service in health care facilities; interference of the Health Ministry in day to day running of the clinics/hospitals; low levels of incentives for health-care professionals and their welfare; now doctors take 32 hour calls up to twice a week.
This puts patients at risk of medical errors and negligence due to fatigue on the part of the doctors; there is no Health Council to monitor care services. However, the infrastructure is acceptable but the service, facilities and even pharmaceutical supplies. Botswana has also been doing fairly well on the fight against HIV/Aids. Botswana’s income inequality, with a Gini Index in excess of 0.5, is one of the highest in the world especially when compared with other high middle-income countries. While the rich continue to amass wealth, the poor continue to wallow in poverty. The middle class is disappearing as the current president is focusing on getting the support of the rich members of the society (the business community) and keeping the poor members poor by giving them soup, radios and blankets when he visits them in their villages.
The government continues to ignore submissions made to it by various trade unions on the need to improve the terms and conditions of service of the workers. To say that the workers in Botswana are disgruntled would be an understatement. Poor service delivery especially in government departments and ministries is common practice. The Bargaining Council, which is made up of the government representatives and trade union representative and whose main function is to discuss the financial rewards of the public servants, is viewed with contempt by the political leaders. It has been paralysed deliberately by the government despite its existence being provided for in the Public service Act of 2008. Botswana used to be an oasis of peace, progress and democracy.
Today Botswana is a shadow of that yester-image as she suffers a deficit in democratic credentials, deterioration of good governance, extra judicial murders by the state; corruption and looting; abuse of office and state power; humiliation of civil servants; taking citizens for granted; violation of human rights, especially minorities; muting of trade and economic freedoms; erosion of personal and civil liberties; an erratic foreign policy and inspiring a culture of fear though intelligence services and victimisation of dissenting voices; edging out the opposition from the contact with business community by intimidating the business community so that they don’t benefit from contributions. The political leaders are not making any concerted effort of fighting corruption. In fact, recent media reports indicate that the rot goes right up to the core of government. Prominent families and the it friends are the beneficiaries of the product of the labour of ordinary and unsuspecting citizens. Works are left unfinished and no major steps are being taken because most of these are result of bad business.
Cabinet ministers charged with corruption continue to serve with the full support of the president. They are not required to step down and clear their names in a court of law before they can be reappointed. Patronage and psychophancy are on the rise. Ethics and accountability are irrelevant at a time when the running melody should have been good governance. Gone are the days when citizens used to feel safe in their country. They trusted the security agents and knew that they are there to protect them. But things have changed.
Citizens feel very insecure. The security agents are trigger happy. Innocent citizens have been shot and killed by security agents without any plausible explanation being given. Some citizens have lost their lives while in police custody and no one has been held accountable. Some people have disappeared in police cells without any trace. While the need for access to water and other amenities is high in Botswana, it is not constitutionally guaranteed (e.g. the right to food, land, education etc…) giving the state the right to tamper with these at will. The Government of Botswana willfully delayed a court finding that it must provide water to Basarwa in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve. Another human rights challenge is the restriction of freedom of movement, particularly to the Basarwa or the San, which is coupled with forceful removal from their ancestral land. Whereas the San have challenged earlier removals from the Central Kalahari Game Reserve in 2006, Government interpreted a court order in favour of the San to apply ONLY to the 189 applicants thus varying the spirit of the court ruling fundamentally against the applicants.
The right to protest by citizens is highly curtailed by the categorisation of employee categories as ‘essential services’, in contravention of ILO provisions and guides. For instance, teachers have been added to this category, though without the pay and other benefits that goes with being an ‘essential services employee’. This latter tactic is a direct result of the industrial action of 2012 whereby the majority of the public service in Botswana undertook the country’s largest industrial action. The executive holds the power to deport foreign nationals without giving reasons. This law has been used to silence people awaiting trial. Botswana is not a member of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural rights and thence not bound by global norms and standards of Human dignity.
Botswana’s key economic challenges are diversifying the economy through the establishment of new economic activities; promoting entrepreneurship and innovation; promoting new export activities and the penetration of regional and international markets; and engaging with globalization, including the global labour market. Immigration is most often thought of in terms of its ability to relieve skills shortages, but it has a more extensive impact than this. In particular immigration can support diversification by attracting entrepreneurs who will invest in new economic activities, and who can help to develop international markets for goods and services. Botswana’s current immigration system is not consistent with the needs of an outward-looking, modern, flexible and efficient economy.
Inadequate supplies of skilled labour, and the problems imposed by the immigration system, are consistently identified by the private sector as one of the most important constraints to economic growth and diversification in Botswana. It limits the ability of firms to access scarce skills, which is crucial given the shortage of certain skills nationally; restricts Botswana’s participation in the global labour market; raises the cost of labour and undermines competitiveness; provides a major obstacle to inward investment and discourages FDI; presents an adverse image to the rest of the world; and hinders diversification and limits employment creation and economic growth. Indeed, Botswana faces a key choice in the way it manages immigration; between being inward looking, protectionist and isolationist in terms of labour skills, business and other opportunities, on the one hand, and attracting skills, and adding to its business, entrepreneurial, professional capacity by opening its doors to those who can contribute.
The focus will be on the movement of skilled manpower, investors and others who can make a positive economic contribution to the country. The underlying assumption is that, properly managed, economic migration (inward immigration) will be highly beneficial to the economy, and indeed is essential if Botswana is to successfully diversify the economy. Reforms are necessary for an objective, transparent, accountable and business-friendly immigration system. Wildlife officers also have orders to ‘shoot to kill’ if confronted with poachers. Botswana prisons are overcrowded partly due to the mixing of foreign nationals with regular prisoners in these facilities.
As at 2012, the prisons which have a capacity of 4200 inmates had slightly over 5000. Whereas citizen prison inmates receive antiretroviral treatment from the state, foreign inmates have not been enjoying this benefit. Only non-governmental organisations provide such a service. The costliness of such interventions however makes this doubtful. Government continues to retain the death penalty in spite of the evidence of its ineffectiveness. And rights of minorities continue to be unprotected. Anecdotal evidence has been given of denial of access to legal counsel, contrary to the law on prisoners during the first 48 hours. There is also evidence of irregular detention of pre-trial murder inmates. In 2010, 965 of them had been in prison for more than a year before trial. The excuse for this being shortage of judicial officers. In the process, justice denied to the detainees. There is no Human Rights Commission in Botswana. The Ombudsman in Botswana only enforces matters of administrative rectitude in the public sector.
In general terms, there is no independent Police Appeals Commission in Botswana to report to when necessary. Grievances are taken to the same organisation about whose treatment an ordinary citizen is complaining. As we go for elections in October 2014, Botswana received a book written by the Speaker of the National Assembly Dr. Margaret Nasha. In the book she devotes a chapter to discussing her political life and experience. In this chapter she regrets the state of the ruling BDP and it’s leadership by employing adjectives and examples that give not only a true but a dim picture of the Organisation. It is widely suspected that this displeased the President to the extent that he frustrated the SADC election observer mission Dr. Nasha was billed for in South Africa. He dressed the matter by suggesting that Botswana will not be involved in SADC Elections observer mission because of lack of resources.
This looks suspicious as it may end up being used as a base to warm up to warding off the SADC observer mission to the Botswana October 2014 elections. The problem here would be Europe and the West, whose mild regard for the SADC observer missions may believe that Botswana is taking this step for the right reasons. It is our duty to awaken the West from their slumber of thinking Botswana today is the shining star it used to be famous for. A lot of what our current government speaks against on democratic standards is what they practice to the core. There is uncertainty about in which direction the elections will go and we can’t rule out the possibility of temptation for the ruling personae giving this election a character their desire by any means they can, even if such violate principles of justice. It is important for the international community to deal with Botswana the way she is not the way she has been.
*This is part of a speech delivered by Motswaledi at Catham House (London). He is Secretary General of UDC and Leader of BMD
