Let me state upfront that I have no personal beef against President Masisi’s acting Permanent Secretary to the President’s (PSP) and her seemingly meteoric rise to power. As an outsider, I’m also pretty clueless regarding the goings on at Government Enclave and how they appoint top talent. I therefore assume that she is a good leader who has executed herself consummately over time to be entrusted with the ultimate job in the civil service. In that respect, I wish her success as the civil service head honcho.
While I do not wish to cast aspersions on her leadership qualities, one thing that I am pretty sure of, is that she has neither the experience nor knowledge of economics. How economies work and what makes them tick or flounder are some of the aspects which do not feature in her set of skills. And if we are to embark decisively and seriously on a recovery path that, I must say, are aspects we have to dip into.
When watching the news over the last few days, I have seen the PSP take centre stage to proffer thoughts on the making the leap from an upper middle income country to high income. All one heard when she spoke on the margins of the retreat that they had, were regurgitations of the so called Reset, lamentations about Batswana as “spectators” in their own economy and an impassioned call for reforms. Apparently after the retreat, civil servants are going to hunker down to a reform programme but it is not clear what exactly they are going to reform. There was no diagnosis of the causes of anemic growth rate and limited job opportunities.
The danger with the PSP as the president’s apparent go-to-man on the economy is that her ideas may easily pass off as the gospel truth. She can simply pontificate about citizens as spectators and that would become yet another soundbite in government circles and distract from dealing with structural economic reforms . The culture in the civil service -which became deeply entrenched under the Khama regime- is not to debate stuff that you know to be technically not sound but let whatever the boss says, go.
It’s a bit weird that top civil servants are still going into a retreat to talk about a Reset when they already have a road map for recovery and growth known as Economic Recovery and Transformation Plan (ERTP). On top of that there is also a Transformation team. It’s a pity but not surprising that these plans are now overshadowed by the Reset. And the recurring theme within this Reset agenda is to try to dispense with economic orthodoxy. Reset sounds like a buzzword dreamt up by a typical international management consulting firm.
What the PSP and her boss, should understand is that economic growth is not a zero sum game however hard we try to make it to be . Foreign investors – if they are genuine types and not state sponsored like Chinese ones – play a critical role in our economic growth and job creation agenda. They don’t take away anything from anybody and the business opportunities that they are said to snatch from us as Batswana have to be created first.
The same applies to wealth. The thing about wealth is that it is not always sitting there to be picked up. Wealth has to be created first through risk taking, discipline, long hours, sweat and sacrifice. So the more you take subtle potshots at foreign investors and insinuate that they are somewhat responsible for floundering Batswana firms or unemployment for that matter, the more uncertainty you create. – And investors – whether foreign or local – like certainty.
And there are still fine economists in the civil service who know how these things work. Perhaps its time for her to defer to them.
