Nestling the State House and Cabinet ministers’ residences is Botswana’s caviar and champagne belt named Extension Five. It is whisperingly moneyed and epitomizes a flash kind of affluence. The streets are lined with elegant and immaculate residences, homes which might have been purpose-built to induce property envy in all passers-by. These houses – whose price tags surpass the P1 million mark – are either artfully ramshackle or gently modern or a bit of both. Every last one of them lays claim to a lovely bit of garden.
Discreet CCTV cameras line the pavement, but the most they’re likely to capture is hours and hours of footage of assorted luxury cars driving along manicure lawns. For a high roller in search of a life less ordinary, the high profile address must have seemed irresistible.
A few years ago, Louis Nchindo encouraged most of his managers at Debswana head office to buy houses there.
For more than a decade, Nchindo was Botswana’s most colorful character. His distinctive pinstriped suits, woven leather braces, high profile residential address and flashy imported cars provided the perfect visual accompaniment of pomp, celebrity and grandiose to a series of decisions he took while he was Managing Director of Debswana.
He was an adventurer socialite; not content with heading Botswana’s biggest foreign exchange earner, Nchindo sought to corner the country’s other potential engines of economic growth.
Determined to tread where few dared, he hacked acres and acres of cotton fields at Pandamatenga, from unforgiving stretches of land which had ruined a good number of farmers, long-stretching fields that have driven some to an early grave.
Even before Masedi Farms in Pandamatenga could start making profit, he turned his hands to the lucrative tourism sector with plans for a luxury five star hotel in Kasane.
His pampered lieutenants at headquarters were foot soldiers in this ambitious plan.
In happier times, Nchindo liked to regale friends with stories of how he started Masedi Farms: “I sent Joe [Matome] with a bunch of white boys to Pandamatenga to assess if the project was viable. When they came back, they told me it could not be done. I almost fired him.”
Joe Matome went back to Pandamatenga, reviewed his earlier assessment, and the result was Masedi Farms.
Nchindo’s then deputy, Mike Witted, and another Manager, Rob Burnham, would subsequently spend most of their work days at Masedi Farms while company Secretary, Joe Matome, worked on the tourism project.
When the current Debswana MD, Blackie Marole, took office, he decided to roll back Nchindo’s ambitious programme and focus on Debswana’s core business – mining.
Overnight, Debswana was saddled with a lot of well paid managers who suddenly found themselves twiddling their fingers – and this is at the heart of the ongoing controversial restructuring of Debswana.
A question and answer information report from Debswana head office which is being circulated among staff members states that the restructuring project is necessary because “ the strategy review of 2005 highlighted the view that the value add from head office was questionable, and that this view was held by executives both at the mines and at head office. In addition, headcount at head office had increased dramatically from 1999 to 2005 and there had been a large increase in associated costs.”
The report further states that “headcount in the departments at head office grew for various reasons – in many cases this was to do with head office taking on a more controlling role revolving around the centralization of activities.”
A question and answer information leaflet on the restructuring programme which is currently being circulated among staff members states that the Strategic Review of 2005, which led to the restructuring “ highlighted the view that the value add” at head office was minimal.
In fact, the head office, with the bulk of its executives, emerges badly in the report in as far as providing strategic leadership.
It is a story fraught with implausible characters and plot twists.
There are 36 Debswana executives, among them Len Makwinja, Joe Matome, Jacob Sesinyi, and Wilfred Mpai who were interviewed during the 2005 strategic review exercise that resulted in the restructuring project. There is the restructuring exercise itself that, for the first time, targeted senior managers for retrenchment among them Makwinja, Matome, Sesinyi, Fontan and Mpai. How the whole exercise went awry and landed these Debswana big shots on slippery ground may come to be judged as the turning point in the Debswana power struggle, where Marole wrestled control from Nchindo’s base.
The executives are accused of all sorts of ills and missed opportunities including insufficient attention and lack of focus.
They are also accused of not scanning the environment for best practice standards.
In a parallel world, Marole could have been a poker player with a reputation as a cool hand.
After three years as Managing Director of Debswana, all the required skills are there: He is patient, comes across as calculating – and, most importantly, he knows when to keep the cards close to his chest and when to play his hand.
His friend from their high school days at Gaborone Secondary School speaks about him as “methodological.”
Information passed to The Sunday Standard indicates how Marole lay low and handed the Debswana executives the rope to hang themselves.
During the 2005 Strategy Review Exercise, the executives said things like, “There is too much emphasis on non-core issues like diversification projects”, “There are too many meetings at head office around operational issues”, and “There is too much transactional work at the expense of long term thinking.” It is understood that up to 50 percent of the executives who were interviewed felt that Debswana had destroyed its value by chasing the 30 million carats target without emphasizing on requisite efficiencies.
As a result of its obsession with the 30 million carat target, the company has “chased 30 million carats without emphasis on requisite efficiencies.”
In their quest to hit the target, engineers at the mines abandoned mining plans in favour of a short cut through high grades.
The company also lost potential recruits because of delays in final authorization offer and that there was “lack of forward thinking.”
But key among the nine weaknesses identified by the strategic review exercise was the structure and role of head office.
With the head office identified as one, if not the chief weakest link in the group, Marole in February announced that for the first time the retrenchment exercise would also target executives at head office and that no one except him would be immune.
It was then that the restructuring exercise took a controversial turn as it targeted influential personalities some of whom had connections in high places.
Nchindo’s boys began to smell blood.
“Blackie took too long to establish himself and his own team. But I know him. He is resolute and steadfast. He has now internalized the culture of both De Beers and Debswana and there is no stopping him,” said his High School buddy.
