This week, I met a friend at a local pub where we usually sit to discuss politics over a drink.
“We cannot talk here,” he said grimly. It was an odd thing to say, but I knew what he meant.
For a while, we talked like veterans, though neither of us had ever joined any army, official or otherwise.
Later that night, my thoughts strayed all over the place, but kept returning home. The vague feeling I had trouble identifying was still lingering, and it took me a long time to place it. My thoughts finally settled on the afternoon of the previous week.
That was when my lunch meeting was disrupted by a trill trill from my pocket. I could not punch the “answer” button. Instead, I found myself wondering if this was a call from an important source. I decided that the safest way would be to press the “decline” button, take down the number and call later from a safe phone.
A new phobia has exploded among journalists, politicians, lawyers and NGO activists in Botswana. Anxious their phones may have been tapped by the Directorate of Intelligence Services (DIS), most are living in a nervous country and will not discuss important business on the phones or in public places. Fear and suspicion have become part of everyday life and a drink in a bar with friends or a conversation on the phone has become security issues.
This is all part of an emerging trend that Botswana is rolling back its democracy. Year on year scrutiny of Botswana’s political and economic governance indicators has revealed an uneven pattern of performance with an increasing show of decline in the scores evidenced from both local and international standards bearers.
The trend has been found disturbing and worrying since it implies that the country’s image as the “shy shape” of good governance in Africa could soon be relegated to the realm of some enviable past.
A report of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa on Governance called African Governance Report II (AGR) stated, “… the status of Botswana as a “shining example” when compared to other African countries in terms of various measures of political, social and economic governance is becoming questionable”.
“Despite its often-praised favourable macro-economic performance and political achievements, Botswana faces some critical economic and social challenges that are common to many countries,” continued the UNECA report, recently released by the Botswana Institute of Development and Policy Analysis (BIDPA).
The list of challenges include the inability to address the diversification of the economy, inflation, serious income inequalities, high levels of unemployment and considerable poverty as well as moral decay.
It has been argued that, coupled with the high prevalence of HIV and AIDS, which threatens the economy’s productive capacity and also affects public institutions, efficiency and effectiveness in service delivery, the potential for political instability and escalating propensity for increased corruption, might not bode well for a long time ‘peace loving’ Botswana.
To make matters worse, even those blemishes that the report manages to capture are reportedly only reflective of a conservative view of the situation as virtually all the people who participate (as respondents) in the study that led to these findings are amongst the elite of Botswana society.
Thus, their perceptions of reality cannot be divorced from their material conditions which have been comfortable over the years and they continue to benefit significantly from the economy, which is otherwise disjointed, structurally unbalanced and largely dependent on the mining industry.
To show the extent to which degeneration is gathering speed, “It is only when we examined other political and economic governance indices (specifically World Bank Institute, Transparency International, Global Competiveness and Doing Business) that we were able to identify significant trends in the evolution of governance,” read part of the report.
Analysts maintain that, given that since for the most part even global institutions such as World Bank and Transparency International, draw information from local official data and statistics, the situation on the ground may in fact be worse than meets official lingo.
Transparency International, in its ranking of the world’s least corrupt countries, decided to reposition Botswana from number 32 to number 38 within the two year period spanning 2005 to 2007.
In terms of economic governance or countries considered business friendly, it appears that the cost, duration and number of procedures, it takes to start business in Botswana have drastically gone up, thus it has resulted in Botswana’s rating in that regard slipping from number 72 in the world in 2006 to number 76 in 2007/8 by the Global Competitiveness index, whereas the World Bank has demoted Botswana from number 48 to number 51 in the same period.
One of the areas highlighted as problematic is the country’s perpetual failure to fully implement the national development plans, and measures required to enhance implantation capacity.
Mention has also been made of the fact that even though there has been much praise for the country’s prudent economic management, projects that are implemented often revealed significant cost overruns, which make such praises questionable.
Reggie Reatile, Botswana National Front Member of Parliament, for Ngwaketse West Constituency, has said that the manner in which the country’s respective national budgets have been organized, cannot be said to be transparent nor robust enough to meet the development needs of the country at any given time.
He said that explains the chaos that has consistently manifested in the education system in recent months.
Apparently, it is generally expected that development policies and strategies initiated by government are meant to address capacity constraints in terms of allocation of resources and distribution of wealth.
To this end, government has set out in its national Vision 2016, the outlook of the society it seeks to achieve.
The UNECA/BIDPA report essentially holds that it is on account of the way people are ruled and how state affairs are managed and regulated, and the country’s interactions with others at the regional and international levels, that it becomes possible to determine the propensity or otherwise for stability and corruption in government.
It is referred to as governance.
In this context, the ability of people, institutions and society, in terms of resources, skills and organizational integrity to set or actualize stipulated objectives and perform functions, as well as solve problems, becomes equally imperative in defining the quality of the services the population can expect from their leaders.
However, Simon Maswibilili, Human Resource Manager at World Group, expressed the view that it would be a mistake to look at issues of governance and capacity without giving due significance to the question of the persona behind the development initiative.
“For instance, when you look at the faces of all the people who have sat on the Board of Directors of key Parastatal organizations and strategic institutions in the country, it is easy to tell who will be there in the next Board because it has kind of become an old boy club, where output seems to take second place than it serves as a token of appreciation or reward for associates, if you will,” states Maswibilili.
According to him, Khama’s “reign must be seen in this context and not differently as he was a head of department, as the Botswana Defense Force Commander”.
To explain his standpoint, Maswibilili pointed out that, for too long there has been a tendency in government to elevate people to positions, especially Board of Directors positions, so much so that “the appointment to certain positions like Permanent Secretary automatically entitle one to not only considerable amount of control, but also the remunerative benefits of sitting on more than several Boards”.
He argued that unless this pattern changes, no sense will come out of the term “governance”.
The effect of this is that instead of creating room for innovation by enlisting new talent and people tested elsewhere, failed and conservative ideas continue to suffuse all developmental efforts and initiative.
As if that was not enough, Parliament has also come under the radar.
Transparency, Accountability, and Corruption in Botswana, a book by University of Botswana’s Democracy Project cites a pertinent motion, tabled in parliament in 1988.
That, “Government take steps further to ensure that parliament as a supreme body in Botswana becomes an independent institution detached from the office of the President where it has all the time been relegated to lower status of a minor department,” read the motion.
To compound matters, many pieces of legislation are replete with clauses empowering the President, ranging from appointment of senior government officials, heads of department, issuance of research permits to all important decisions in government.
Dumelang Saleshando, MP for Gaborone Central, queried that at no time in the history of this, Botswana’s politics has parliament and cabinet appeared so helpless, whilst the president issued one directive after the other, adding that many are beginning to doubt the authenticity of some of the promises, and the hope they initially invested in the new administration.
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Although, for a long time the BDP has been pursuing a largely welfare state economic dispensation, under all its first two former presidents, then moved towards a neo-liberalist approach under Festus Mogae, but at least none of the previous presidents were ever accused of meddling in the authority of the party.
There is concern that Khama’s apparent disregard for the institutional integrity of his party has led to his “deliberate” but unwise purging of his perceived rivals in the party in order to find a permanent hold of “his fathers party,” makes it difficult to predict the ideological outlook of his policies on gaining the full sanction of the electorate after the forthcoming elections.
“Khama’s pursuit of a ‘father Christmas ideology’ whereby cheap populism and electoral expediency has come to take precedence even over the ruling party’s declared vision, and now resulted in the internal bickering that now besiege the Botswana Democratic Party, is neither good for governance nor for democracy in general,” lamented Saleshando.
It is in this context that many interpret his apparent zeal and determination to ensure loyalty of the party and the security forces, especially the intelligence agencies.
The statement of the Auditor General, to the effect that some millions belonging to the DIS found way into the coffers of the Disaster Management Office in the OP, because there was no code yet for the funds raises serious doubts about matters of governance, and more importantly plays into public confidence.
In absence of a statutory established, Human Rights Commission, to monitor the excesses of the security forces, the UN report contends that, Best International Practice may be at stake.
