This newspaper has in the past singled out and criticized Kgalagadi Breweries for the company’s steadfast refusal to localize the positions of Managing Director and Finance Director.
We have argued that such insistence by KBL shareholders to reserve these two positions for employees from SAB Miller, who are effectively the owners, belied the company’s commitment to empowering Batswana.
More importantly, we said it could not have been true that there were no Batswana to hold these positions in KBL.
In driving our position against KBL group we pointed out that if Batswana were running bigger companies like Debswana, surely they could also be in much better position to successfully manage smaller outfits like KBL.
We regret to say that while overall KBL has been localizing many of its executive positions, the position of Managing Director remains out of bounds to Batswana.
We have also applied the same logic to some of the banking institutions doing business in Botswana.
We said it was disgraceful for Standard Chartered Bank, for example, that, after operating in Botswana for more than a hundred years, they still had not produced a citizen Managing Director.
With regard to Barclays Bank we applauded them for having localized the position as early as about ten years ago, but decried the fact that a Managing Director of Barclays Bank Botswana appeared to us as nothing more than a glorified public relations officer because even as they hold the position they did not enjoy the powers to make executive decisions commensurate with their title.
Such powers remained either in London or somewhere in the Middle East.
FNB and Stanbic have since localised their positions of Managing Director. We hope that the whole thing is not a smoke screen to appease the regulator.
While progress has been made in localizing the key positions across the economy, we note, in the same breath and with a deep, big regression, that took place at the country’s most powerful company ÔÇô Debswana.
Debswana is a multi billion Pula company.
It is a very strong brand with mines whose contribution to De Beers’s overall bottom line is unrivalled within that group’s family of companies.
One of the most remarkable things about Debswana over the years has been the company’s unique ability, owing to its financial ability to train, groom and retain top grade citizen managers in every technical field.
Since at least 1991, the most senior post of Managing Director at Debswana has been held by a Motswana.
That has been a source of pride, especially since it went a long way to prove that Government’s long term policy to concentrate efforts on human resource development had paid off.
That also assured us as a nation that if we could run a world class company such as Debswana, then we were making progress towards ultimately exporting our skills.
After the position of Managing Director was localized, it was followed by localization of General Managers of the mines, which positions are just as important, but more at operational level.
Over time almost the entire team of the executive committee, especially at the mines, became citizens.
Tragically it would seem like over the last few years there have been stealth, behind-the-scenes maneuvers not only to reverse the gains so attained over the years but to ultimately obliterate them.
That process culminated last year with the sacking of Blackie Marole who had been Debswana Managing Director for six years, including during 2008/09 when the company went through what has been its most difficult phase as a result of the world financial downturn.
As we speak, the positions of MD and Deputy MD at Debswana have been delocalized.
We have no wish to sound xenophobic, but given Debswana’s importance to this country we have no choice but to express our disappointment.
If Marole was a bad performer (which we do not believe he was) surely there was nothing wrong with sacking him.
But it’s an insult to the nation to say there could not have been anybody else in our midst able and qualified to run Debswana after Marole left.
While Debswana is a private company, for many years Botswana Government has been unrelenting in reminding the world that Debswana was also a national asset which was going to be used not only to develop the country through proceeds from diamonds but also to empower citizens.
Debswana assisted the Government overall strategy in such areas like human resource development, procurement, citizen empowerment and, last but not least, sentimental pride.
It would be interesting to hear if government has abandoned all those ideals.
More importantly, it would be interesting to know what Government is doing to ensure that once again citizens of this country take control of Debswana.
Or have the citizens failed Debswana? In which case Government should also come out into the open and say it rather than do it clandestinely!
