We have always been of the view that corruption posited one of the greatest threats to our security as a nation.
The other elements we have consistently identified as posing such similar threats have been HIV/AIDS and most recently poverty and youth unemployment.
Save for HIV/AIDs, all these risks continue. In fact they are getting worse.
By government statistics, which we have every reason to believe they are conservative, unemployment hovers around 20%.
This is scary indeed.
Many countries in the world are worried by unemployment levels getting anywhere around 10%.
Ours is double that much, and as we put it according to conservative estimates. This means that red lights are already flashing.
And something really has to be done. We are aware that government is frantically trying to address the situation.
Our view has not changed, which is that government cannot be expected to create employment.
Job creation really is the realm of the private sector.
What government seems to be doing is self serving.
They are using the high levels of unemployment as a political theater on which survival strategies of the ruling party are being hatched and tested.
We urge government to immediately empower the private sector so that it could do what it is supposed to do.
That would entail relaxing our immigration policy restrictions which are currently excessive.
Unemployment and poverty especially among young people is breeding resentment and ill will.
Many young people are beginning to think that there is not much that they owe their country.
This is because they look around and they see a kind of wealthy which they themselves cannot lay their hands on.
This issue has to be addressed not only as an emergency, but with a determination that could enhance unity rather than break the nation.
If not addressed, unemployment has the potential to break this nation apart.
Many of our young people have become vulnerable and they can fall prey to all sorts of influences that promise them deliverance.
Our concern is that when so many people are unemployed, civil strife, and this includes insurgencies and indeed civil wars are never far away.
Another issue that has all the hallmarks of anarchy is corruption.
Our government seems to be helpless against acts of corruption.
This helplessness is edging young people into the brink nudging them to take the law into their hands.
All of a sudden a large population of our country believes that corruption indeed pays. That cannot be right.
We call on Government to crack mercilessly on all acts of corruption, especially that corruption that is undertaken by people holding senior and sensitive jobs.
Botswana’s national unity is at crossroads.
People have lost faith in institutions.
That is not good for long term existence of this nation.
We call those in power to help restore the integrity of our institutions.
If that does not happen, very soon some individuals and indeed tribes are going to feel that they are being systematically marginalized.
They are going to feel that there is an agenda to leave them out in the ongoing looting.
And when that moment comes, unity and nation building will become history.
