Dear Spencer,
It beats the hell logic out of me why the majority of Batswana still live in abject poverty when our country is filthy rich, at least by African standards. Unemployment remains stubbornly high in our country which has a small population of less than two million people.
In contrast to the high unemployment rate and level of poverty, we rank among the few African countries with the highest per capita income. In fact Botswana long graduated from a poor-income to a middle-income country.
The root cause of poverty and unemployment among indigenous Batswana is undoubtedly a result of the many misguided and unsustainable citizen economic empowerment policies/programmes that the country has pursued over the years.
While government can be credited for prudent management of the economy especially diamond revenues, the same cannot be said about citizen economic empowerment initiatives.
Simply put, government has not initiated and implemented any well thought out citizen economic empowerment schemes geared towards improving the livelihoods of Batswana hence the majority of our people are still poor in a relatively small and rich country.
Most of our people still survive from government hand outs like the Ipelegeng programme which to say the least is not even sustainable in the long term.
However, the thrust of my debate delves on whether the government has appropriate citizen economic empowerment programmes aimed at improving the standards of living of our people.
First and foremost, it is disgusting that government has dismally failed to act on various attempts imploring her to move swiftly in the direction of a citizen economic empowerment programme or policy.
I think, Spencer, you would recall that some years ago former Member of Parliament for Shoshong Duke Lefhoko tabled a motion on citizen economic empowerment which received overwhelming support to the delight of many Batswana.
It remains a mystery why government decided to shelve that motion which otherwise would have gone a long way in shaping economic policies aimed at empowering Batswana, especially indigenous Batswana who have not benefited from the country’s past economic gains.
A lot of us were at the time hopeful that with the adoption of such a noble motion, we were in the process of seeing a concerted effort driven by political goodwill in addressing the plight of the many suffering Batswana as most of the previous citizen economic empowerment programmes had failed.
It would be recalled that programmes like the Financial Assistance Policy (FAP) just bled the economy of millions of Pula and failed to yield the desired results. FAP was conceived to assist enterprising people to start and expand businesses with a view to creating employment and in the process alleviating poverty.
That was not to be. The programme was not tailored for citizens and most of its foreign beneficiaries used it to loot the economy and then disappear with the profits to develop their native economies.
Some of the foreign FAP beneficiaries made their money or simply defrauded FAP and disappeared into thin air. I recall that one of the FAP beneficiaries, a certain Power Chabgwe, defrauded the assistance programme of millions of Pula and skipped the country before the conclusion of his trial.
It is not only FAP that was conceptualized on a wrong footing. Take a look at programmes like ARAP, ALDEP 1 and 2 and many others. They never yielded the desired and intended results hence they were reviewed and substituted with similar programmes under new or different names.
We are currently saddled with a lot of other programmes whose results are nothing to write home about. The programmes are simply bleeding our limited economic resources while we have nothing to show in return.
Yours
Joseph Balise
Dear Joe
All talk of citizen economic empowerment has now become a wild whine in the dark.
For me it is one of those things on which I have since given up. There is simply no hope that we will ever break through.
During his years in political wilderness, PHK Kedikilwe made citizen economic empowerment his mantra. There was not a week that passed without him decrying the extent to which our Government had economically abandoned its own people.
I still keep a treasured copy of an eloquent speech he made at a BOCCIM conference on the issue almost a decade ago where he received a standing ovation after saying it was only Botswana Government that sort to apologise for favouring its citizens over non-citizens.
I would be lying to you if I said I have for once heard him address the same issue since he reentered cabinet as perhaps the most powerful member of that body after the President and the Vice President.
I often find myself wondering if our politicians have opportunistically identified citizen empowerment as a self-serving mantra hoist with which to propel themselves into the limelight by winning public sympathy before abandoning it once they are ensconced in their cushioned seats of authority.
President Ian Khama made similar noises in the first few weeks of his presidency going as far as to issue a clutch of vague directives on the matter. But four years into his presidency it has become abundantly clear to many of us that for him citizen economic empowerment means nothing more than enriching his tight knit circle of loyal friends and those closest to him who are by far the only ones winning big Government contracts and multi-national deals.
The rest of us are expected to make do with running corner shops.
Just why the Government of Botswana resists all calls to use its procurement budget to empower Batswana has remained a mystery to me.
In all seriousness, we should by now be taking about a law rather than a policy on citizen economic empowerment. By the way that is the language that was pioneered by Kedikilwe a decade ago before he recoiled back into a cocoon.
In the absence of a law, a policy is too much at the mercy and whims of our resentful civil servants ÔÇô and from experience our civil servants are very much against seeing their fellow citizens get well off.
It would seem like for many of our civil servants, there is something inherently wrong when a black Motswana like you and me become wealthy. Yet the same civil servants find it altogether natural when a Motswana of either European or Asian extraction become filthy rich from enjoying the largesse and patronage of government procurement system. This is the tragedy that will haunt us for many years to come.
Other than that I refuse to even bother to engage you on your musings about prudent economic management.
I would have thought that by now the myths surrounding all those accolades would have been exposed for all to see by how vulnerable we have been to the world economic downturn from which we are still far from recovery.
Yours
Spencer Mogapi
Dear Spencer
There is no justification why after 45 years of independence our economy is still dominated as to be literally driven by government. Any talk of a private sector is just but an apology.
In fact, by far government still remains the largest employer in the country.
This calls for serious introspection of our economic programmes.
There is not a way as a country we can develop a sustainable private sector unless it is citizen led. In fact I sometimes worry for the affluent none Batswana businesses. How can they sleep well amid such a sea of indigenous poverty?
Why have the few programmes aimed at empowering citizens failed?
Why is the structure of our economy so skewed against the private sector and in favour of government?
Is that sustainable in the long term?
What needs to be done to correct the imbalances?
My answer to all the questions above is that the solution has to have a dose of citizen economic empowerment.
Is our education appropriate to uplift the citizens?
The citizen economic programmes that were initiated in the past were tailored for political expediency to the extent that they failed to meaningfully empower Batswana. We need to seriously review the programmes and determine if they are appropriate for our country’s economic needs and environment.
I earlier talked about the many failed programmes like ALDEP, ARAP, LIMID, NAMPAAD including the reservation policy. Can you honestly tell me what the reservation policy has achieved? I will tell you that it has achieved nothing save to breed some small entrepreneurs who have failed to penetrate local, regional and international markets.
In this era of globalization, we need businesses which can stand on their own beyond government patronage.
This can only be achieved if we conceive and initiate citizen economic programmes that are relevant and supported by an appropriate citizen economic empowerment policy including environment.
At times I become apprehensive that if government does not move more quickly in its citizen economic empowerment drive, it is definitely breeding potential discontent among its citizens which can have dire consequences in the future as more and more people get disgruntled because of the limited employment and economic opportunities. Leaving so many indigenous people behind could also breed ill feelings of xenophobia.
Government should immediately take a serious audit of the achievements of the BEDIA, CEDA, BDC IFSC, NDB and others to evaluate the number of jobs they have produced since inception.
Are these enterprises driving the economy in the right direction? If they are, why is economic diversification still elusive?
Agricultural assistance programmes are the worst disaster. They have come in all shapes and forms and all dismally failed to improve our food security position. Take for instance ISPAAD, NAMPAAD and others and tell me what they have achieved.
Government should design a proper agricultural policy to ensure that the fertile land of Pandamatenga is fully utilized with irrigation from the huge water resources from the Chobe river instead of the many piece meal programmes that are not suited for our erratic rainfall patterns.
Barolong farms is one other serious candidate in this respect. It proved its potential in the past and unfortunately government neglected to prop it up to cope with modern technological demands.
Yours
Joseph Balise
Dear Joe
You can go on and on cataloguing our economic failures as a people. When everything is said and done, can you then pause for a minute and think of where we would be as a people had it not been of our chance discovery of diamonds? I shudder to think of what would have become of this country were it not of revenue from diamonds.
My take is that the money from diamonds was so plentiful that were it not for lack of economic imagination we could have achieved much more as a country.
Of course it’s a fact that the money has in many respects been used for the good of the people.
But crucially that money should have been used to diversify the economy from minerals so as to create a more sustainable and longer lasting base, all of which I am afraid, we have not done.
As you so eloquently point out, despite all the impressive potential stemming from our hefty balance sheet, we have not used our comparative advantages to put ourselves on a good pedestal. In fact we have been overtaken by late comers because they had developed more imaginative visions than we had been able to over our close to fifty years of independence.
Thus for all the investments ploughed over the years we have very little to show for our attempts at economic diversification ÔÇô a catch phrase that, I must once again remind you has dominated our lexicon for well over a generation.
I worry a lot when I get to think of the fact that diamonds are getting depleted and also costly to get from the ground.
If we failed to economically empower our people when we had so much going for us, what hope is there when things turn for the worse as they already have started to be?
Yours
Spencer Mogapi
Dear Spencer
It pains me a lot to discuss the issue of citizen economic empowerment in this era of globalization that is made all the worse by the meltdown we are going through.
This is particularly so given that there are concerted government efforts to drive the economy through privatization.
It goes without saying that the privatization process will entail loss of jobs as the entities being privatized strive for efficiency. Part of the efficiency entails high profit motif and less operational expenditure.
But if Batswana are currently not economically empowered, how will they meaningfully participate in the privatization process? They will undoubtedly fail to buy stake in the privatized entities. In fact they stand to lose jobs en masse. Is that a desirable economic outcome for our people? Definitely not.
I am quite aware that government is in the process of establishing a citizen share warehousing facility from which they can pool some shares in the future. However, if the citizens are not economically empowered, their access to those shares will remain a pie in the sky.
I already foresee a situation where an even fewer amount of citizens will in future be able to break the barrier of poverty.
Our starting point then should be to ensure that citizens and their companies are economically empowered so as to enable them to meaningfully contribute to their country’s economic development.
May be it is time that we revert to education with production. No sufficient reasoning has been advanced for abandoning education with production.
Skills development should become a buzzword in government planning. Without proper skills Batswana will remain at the bottom edge of economic development and the economy will be forced to continually import skilled labour.
We need a paradigm shift in our education system in addition to crafting an appropriate citizen economic empowerment policy. Failure to do so is a recipe for disaster which we may not be able to contain in the future.
Yours
Joseph
Dear Joe
Before we get carried away, it is important to point out that what we need to do is identify the real reasons why we have failed to enable a majority of our people to participate in the economy of their country.
The answer, I would argue is not so much a lack of appropriate education as a failure by those in leadership to do what good leaders should do for their countries and people.
We are led by politicians who not only lacked political will but also recklessly ignored the economic imperatives they had to tackle to take the country to new levels.
The reason why we got away with it for so long is simply because diamond revenues were so immense that they just about absorbed all the economic blunders we made along the way.
As you know so well, that cushion is no longer there, hence the bumpy ride that is everybody is now complaining about.
I have always doubted if indeed we were the excellent economic managers we were made to be. Or we simply were lucky to have so much money that any idiot would have muddled their way with, along the way creating a façade of economic development.
As a people we allowed ourselves to become slaves of praise poems that were for years wantonly sung by international bodies about how economically prudent we were.
And now the situation has caught up with us. And we find ourselves in a position where we have nothing in our hands to be prudent about.
I worry a lot that if we do not adopt what you rightly call a “paradigm shift”, it will not be long before both the World Bank and IMF arrive at our gates to literally tell us how we should manage this economy; the same one that for years they told us was one of the best run in the world.
Yours
Spencer Mogapi
