One of the popular refrains used to show the success of our developmental model is that, at independence, we had only 6 kilometers of tarred road and that we now have more than a thousand kilometers. We are never told as to how many kilometers we were supposed to have by now. Once you look at this issue from this perspective you realize how meaningless this refrain is.
Most of our roads have reached their design lives and are in need of upgrading or complete reconstruction. We have areas that need roads, first time. A lot of our people have died and will die never having known the fruits of our purported development successes. How do we in good faith put ourselves forward as a good model for development?
It is projected that the revenues from diamonds will decline in the near future. We have consistently failed to generate new engines of growth for our economy. How do we hope to meet the development needs of our people if we have to spread our revenues on rehabilitating deteriorated infrastructure and provision of expanded networks in the face of increased costs and shortage of skilled manpower?
Our political leadership lacks patriotism and vision. For the better part of this financial year, from April 2008 to now, the leadership of this country has failed to make use of available citizen professional skills. It is not as if they are unaware of its existence. They lack the requisite maturity and presence of mind to know that our country and its people come first.
This leadership has no problem talking about human dignity yet act in a manner that ensures that over thirty percent of our people never taste the fruits of our mineral revenues. No leader who is seriously concerned about the welfare of his people can ignore citizen skills.
This attitude of our leadership is also seen in the way they have approached mining generally. Our government is reported to have declined to take a stake in the AK6 mining venture. Why could they not create a special purpose vehicle to allow Batswana to get a stake in this venture? This is not an original idea of mine. A commentator on Gabz FM once remarked that there is no point talking about citizen economic empowerment if we leave out mining.
Can somebody please explain to me the difference between warehousing Air Botswana shares and creating a special purpose vehicle to enable Batswana to have shares in mining entities? Recently one local company, FSG, listed on the Botswana Stock Exchange and its issue was over subscribed. This shows that there is a hunger out there for entities in which our people can invest.
Our leaders are so imbued with government identity that they cannot function or think outside this box. Most of them have spent their entire working lives as government employees, rising through the ranks of the public service before becoming political leaders. Even permanent secretaries cannot retire without seeking a contract extension. They have no identity outside of government. In fact if you profile their lives, they consist of nothing other than the various posts that they have held in government or government funded institutions.
Very often people provide an escape route for our political leaders by saying that some of us are not engaged because we are perceived to be anti establishment. I beg to differ with this thinking, for when contrasted with the way they have misused our mineral wealth, it becomes obvious that our leaders are generally incompetent when it comes to optimum use of resources.
If our existing infrastructure could not promote creation of employment opportunities and reduction of poverty, when it was at its prime, what makes us think that upgrading of our deteriorating infrastructure will create jobs for the thousands of our children that we are churning out of questionable institutions of higher learning, with useless qualifications, that we have allowed to mushroom in our country.
Imagine being asked to fill a room with people who can resolve the developmental puzzle that is our country. First place Rre Ian Khama and then add his younger brother. I do not believe that any objective person with full information about the intellectual and professional capabilities of these two gentlemen would hold that the addition of the younger brother makes any significant increase in their ability to solve the puzzle.
Now add Rre B. Gaolathe, again from his record it is obvious that the ability to resolve the puzzle has not changed significantly. Add Rre Kedikilwe, still there will be no significant change. Kedikilwe supports citizens when outside cabinet and abandons the cause once inside cabinet. Include Rre Kwelagobe and Rre Merafhe the scales do not tip significantly, all you have is an increase in volume and not substance. By filing the room with these gentlemen one is effectively using the same tools and methods that have failed to deliver our development objectives. We all know that to use the same tools and methods to get a different and better result is an exercise in folly.
Looked at from this perspective the case for a cabinet made up of political appointees from outside parliament becomes very attractive.
Even when known activists and supporters of the opposition have been allowed to serve in the public service the strong pull of government inability to source ideas from non governmental agencies or operatives is so strong that outsiders are effectively marginalized and their skills not used for the benefit of our country.
We have within our country a large pool of outsiders. By these I do not mean foreigners, but citizens who for one reason or other are considered by our political leaders and the public service to be people whose skills and expertise the nation can do without, purely on the basis that they do not automatically give ground, and dare question the solutions proposed by our leaders to deliver our development objectives. This questioning is not from a political perspective but from looking objectively at the proposed solutions and empirical evidence.
Surely, our nation cannot be expected to accept an explanation that says our government is unable to use the capacity inherent in outsiders because of its procurement processes or laws. No patriotic leadership can lightly say that they are unaware of the capacity in those who are not part of their circle of friends, acquaintances or political parties. It is their duty to know what skills are available in our citizens.
Our leaders have internalized this classification of our people (into insiders and outsiders) to such an extent that they have no problem dismissing our citizens from the public service and retaining foreigners. The recent dismissal of citizen directors was in my view misguided and reinforced the anti citizen fraternity.
We have also of late seen a spate of corruption prosecutions involving black citizens. This begs the question whether in this country only black citizens are corrupt? In the trial of a former permanent secretary there was mention of a member of the Indian community, a well known property magnate, the magistrate wondered why this man was not in court. Some of us are waiting impatiently for an answer to this question.
One wonders how a leadership that finds nothing wrong with not using available skills to deliver much needed development projects can expect to be taken seriously when it purports to take decisions in the national interest. It’s incredible that this same leadership wants the nation to accept that it can make decisions on the national security interests of this country.
Most of our leaders are too old to learn new tricks. We are wasting precious time by retaining the likes of Merafhe, Kwelagobe, Kedikilwe, and Gaolathe in key ministries. They have had ample opportunity to prove their competency and deliver. They have failed. To retain them is to subject our country to another five years of the same old and tired ideas. I am not aware of any human being who lives forever. We all have a limited time to live. Every day we retain these gentlemen in positions of leadership dehumanizes those who are excluded from the mineral revenue largesse.
We have a young population that needs jobs. We have a vast country that needs state of the art telecommunications and roads infrastructure. We need a regulatory regime that promotes economic activity and a leadership that is aware of the need to place wealth in citizen hands. All these old men have been unable to look ahead, but have spent all their political lives looking backwards to what we did not have. We need young leaders who can look ahead. We need young leaders who have their lives ahead of them. All these old men have their best years behind them. They have no real interest in the future.
It is also interesting that much as they like to look backwards they never want to discuss the vast opportunities that they have squandered. When our neighbours were involved in wars we failed to take advantage. Failed economies like Zambia produced engineers and doctors, we did not. Zimbabwe produced science teachers, engineers, and nurses, we did not. These old men cost us a lot and they want to continue to do so.
It is not clear exactly how allowing food vendors to sell in government offices advance our people’s economic interests? Only a room full of a leadership pool that is unpatriotic can hold that food vending in government offices is better that creating a special purpose vehicle for citizens to acquire shares in mining entities.
These are the same people who have been agreed to open up our country to people from the SADC region. They do not care that their counterparts in the SADC region are empowering their own people. Much as they make noise about Zimbabwe, they ignore the fact that Mugabe is empowering his people. The political situation in Zimbabwe is temporary but the wealth transfer is long term. In ten years time the Zimbabweans will be praising Mugabe whilst we will be lamenting lost opportunities.
We need a leadership that is nationalistic in tenor. Not a leadership geared towards praise singing from foreigners and questionable rating agencies that have been discredited by the current financial crisis.
