Dear Spencer,
I have not changed my mind that right from the beginning the strike action by public servants could not have run for this long had we in place an imaginative leadership that was willing to listen and not try to play God.
It is a result of utter carelessness, recklessness and contempt by our leadership that this strike has degenerated into what it has become.
It still remains a mystery to me why Khama is averse to meeting and dialoguing with the public service union leaders in a bid to forging a lasting solution to the ongoing strike.
His recent address at the High Level Consultative Council was at least by me not a sincere gesture of finding a solution to a national problem.
While he was eloquent, which is unusual for him, he simply reheard past points before going on a point scoring exercise that was meant to shout down the workers instead of engaging them.
I must also point out that I felt it was a wrong audience which was given what was clearly a belated message.
I suspect at the beginning the President believed workers were calling a bluff when they said they were going to strike.
Or, at the very least, he must have thought it was never going to last more than a week at the longest.
Otherwise how do you explain the fact that there are no contingency plans in place.
Immediately it became apparent that the workers were to stage a nationwide strike, the president should have foregone all his other businesses and engaged the union leaders with a view to finding a lasting solution.
I do not believe the strike is in any way intended to destabilize and reverse the country’s economic gains. The unions resorted to the strike action on the back of the economic hardship endured by its membership on account of rising inflation and eroded purchasing power on account of rising prices.
It is an insult to accuse the public servants of lacking patriotism.
For three years the workers withstood the brunt of the economic down turn with the hope that once the economy recovered government would act swiftly in hiking their salaries.
Government has however arrogantly ignored their plight and embarked on the implementation of other projects.
Botswana, like the rest of the world has suffered the effects of the global economic recession but in the same vein the workers have kept the economy afloat by rendering services. Had they not done so, the economy would have probably grounded to a complete halt.
It is on the basis of this endurance that the employees are now demanding an adjustment to their salaries.
 While it is desirable that the government balanced its budget, it is equally important that a salary increment is implemented to mitigate the impact of the increased cost of living.
I have this deep conviction that President Khama mishandled the situation. Long before the budget was presented, he went to some village in Tswapong North and dismissed the possibility of a civil service salary increase.
Typical of the man who always wants to be centre of attraction!
He always wants to be the one delivering big news.
The announcement was made to people who are not even employed, let alone by government.
Yours
Joseph Balise
Dear Joseph
Once again your criticism of Ian Khama betrays your fondness to criticize him for everything that goes wrong on earth. Giving him credit is something that never crosses your mind.
According to your rules, Khama can simply never win.
If he tries to intervene he is accused of hogging all the attention to himself. If he stays away he is accused of being aloof, of being careless and not doing enough.
It is clear that the President took time because he wanted to allow negotiators space to handle the matter amongst themselves.
His address to the HLCC was appropriate in that as the State President he had to appraise business leaders present about an issue that had arrested the imagination of the entire nation.
I wonder what accusations you would be directing at the man had he chosen not to talk about the strike action at that event: “Khama keeps mum, the man has no solutions, or some such insults…”
Like I put it earlier, he simply cannot win.
It has not escaped my attention that you want to portray the striking workers in the good light, as if the whole lot of them were angels.
Conveniently you choose to turn a blind eye to the ulterior motives behind the strike.
You do not want to mention the well known fact that this strike action was right from the beginning not about money.
It was a political stunt, led, infiltrated and manipulated by well politicians who wanted to use it to achieve the goals they could achieve at the polls.
Yours
Spencer Mogapi
Dear Spencer
Lets for a second look at the key reason why President Khama said he would not give salary increases.
Right from the beginning he has talked the P7 billion budget deficit as the reason.
Strangely he does not want to concede that at its highest the deficit stood at P12 billion.
So it has been coming down, an indication that the economy is recovering, though perhaps not a rate that he would have liked.
An additional P2 billion to the wage bill would have put the deficit at P9 billion, still much lower than the ceiling from where it initially stood.
So I agree with those who say bad planning and poor prioritising by Government were the true reasons behind the strike.
The government’s unnerved attitude is akin to our grandfather’s old attitude of marveling in keeping┬álarge herds of cattle instead of selling some to fund their children’s education only for the drought to come and wipe out the whole herd.
Khama maintains that a 16 percent civil service salary increase would gobble a further P2 billion in addition to the current P12 billion wage bill. By the way, who is creating this country’s massive billion foreign exchange reserves? Is it not the same employees whom Khama does not want to award an increment? Obviously the reserves are no manna from heaven.
The salary increase is a necessary evil that government must undertake. Many countries, including the world’s biggest super power (America) is forever running deficits for its economic sustainability. A 16 percent salary increase would of course delay the balancing of the budget but will not eternally derail government from balancing its budget.
In fact, economists tell me that at least six percent of the increase will find its way back to the national purse by way of income tax, VAT and many other taxes including the infamous alcohol levy. Simply put, government would be giving with one hand and taking with the other.
My dear Spencer, I plead with you to plead with Khama to spare the employees and award them an increment. The denial of the increment is creating more hardship for the ordinary folk that the president confesses to love.
Our parents are suffering. The clinics are literally closed. Our children are suffering. The schools are dysfunctional. Mind you, I do not write for the enjoyment of it. I have children as well as parents who have been hard hit by this strike.
Yours truly
Joseph
Dear Joe
I do not want to sound insensitive, but if you had a clear grasp of Botswana’s basic economics you would have long internalized the simple fact the true wealth of this country is not created by people currently on strike.
The wealth of this country is created by the people working for Debswana mines, who at least by the time I last checked were not a part of the ongoing strike.
The only thing that the people on strike do is to help Government spend the wealth created by our mines.
Yes, some public servants provide essential services, as in hospitals and other emergency services, but they are, strictly speaking, in overall net consumers and not by any stretch producers.
I must however thank you for your reference to the government wage bill.
P12 billion does not to me make sense for a small developing country like Botswana, taking into consideration that figure as a proportion of our GDP.
This strike action has for the first offered Government a glorious opportunity to cut down on the size of the public service, which according to IMF and the World Bank is bloated, unsustainable and unproductive ÔÇô and one might add lately spoiled by a pervasive culture of entitlement.
It is an opportunity for which no right thinking Government would want to miss.
I look forward to how you and your fellow travelers will be falling hard on Ian Khama should Government decide to implement right-sizing initiatives within the public service.
But for goodness sake, somebody is going to have to do it.
You remember how Festus Mogae said he was going to do it only for him to chicken out early in his presidency? The size of our civil service and its attendant wage bill is not something for which we should be proud. In fact it should be a source of shame for it goes to the root of exposing our shoddy economic planning.
Yours forever
Spencer
Dear Spencer
It fascinates me how far you are prepared to go if only to be admitted inside the inner circle of Khama’s henchmen.
It is not an exaggeration to say were you to be admitted you are likely to be the most ruthless of his disciples.
How it pains me that you see nothing wrong with the way the man continues to mishandle the strike with such shocking impunity.
You do not seem concerned in the least that his utterances do not befit a person of his stature and a holder of the high office of the president.
The arrogance and intransigence that he displays in handling the strike will forever haunt him and his party.
I shudder to implore the workers to punish him heavily in the coming general election. I am no politician but I just hope that the opposition politicians will capitalize on Khama’s mistakes in preparation for 2014.
In fact, if I had my way Khama would be charged with crimes of culpable homicide on the back of the deaths that are occurring at our hospitals as a result of the strike. He has allowed the situation to deteriorate to untold magnitude.
I wonder where the learned Attorney General Dr Athaliah Molokomme is. I think she should be an accomplice.
She should take the flak for failing to advise Khama when it mattered most. Khama has continued to interfere with the negotiations willy-nilly.
Now that he keeps harping on the budget deficit, he should hand over his accounting books to the unions to decipher how they can play around with the figures in order to accommodate their own increase.
He has been unbending in his position and I wonder whether he is by extension telling the workers to strike forever.
Business in Botswana has grounded to an abrupt halt. It matters not whether the country’s borders are open. The volume of trade is at its lowest. Potential investors are damn scared to bring their investments into a country whose future is uncertain and only hangs in the balance by God’s grace.
The impact of this strike is going to further derail the balancing of the very budget that Khama confesses he so much wants to balance. I feel pity for Ken Matambo whose numbers will ultimately fail to add up at the close of the financial year.
As I sign off, I urge the workers to punish Khama without flinching. He has definitely caused this economy more harm than good. He is no different from the rest of the African leaders who have no regard for welfare of their citizenry.
Yours
Joseph
Dear Joe
Can you for a second set aside your brazen hatred for Khama and imagine what you would have done were you in his difficult position.
Here are public servants who are all out to topple a legitimate and democratically elected Government.
In the place of such a government, they want to install a group of their political friends, a good number of whom have a history of disloyalty, indiscipline and open defiance for which Khama had no choice but to sack them while they were members of his party.
Worried that they may not make it against him in the next elections, they hatch a regime change plan, lace it with labour demands and start what in other countries may easily have been classified as treason.
Would you not have entrenched your heels and appealed to your traditional heartlands like Khama has so successfully done?
At the risk of once again getting you to portray me as a man of straw, I think these have been the most difficult days for President Khama and the worst may yet to come, but for someone who is not so well grounded in economics, I think the President was well advised to bite the bullet, refuse the 16% demands and risk whatever fallout was likely to come his way.
Even if he ultimately resigns, I think it would be on account that he would rather leave office than be an accomplice to a reckless scheme to ruin the economy of this country.
In the meantime I urge you to advise your opposition friends to go out and campaign directly to the people and not hide behind opportunistic demands that are not likely to take them far in their long term political ambitions.
I remain
Yours
Spencer Mogapi 
