In the past week, successful and rich local entrepreneur, Satar Dada was vilified by many for the mere sin of offering his home for COVID 19 vaccinations. Judging by the vociferous manner in which Dada’s donation has been criticized, you would be excused for thinking that he bears some responsibility for the flu that broke out in the Chinese city of Wuhan and has now claimed the lives of over two and a half million people around the world. In addition you would on the basis on the ensuing furore, think that somehow Dada is responsible for livelihoods that have been abruptly disrupted and millions thrust into poverty as sources of income disappeared.
The bile that Dada has had to endure has been unprecedented. It is ironic that as Dada comes under heavy and irrational criticism, the same critics have never had a single word of criticism or disrespect whatsoever towards China for plunging us into this precarious situation in the first place.
Prompted by the media frenzy surrounding Dada offering his house for vaccinations, I decided to take my jab there. Unsurprisingly, the place was pleasant and spotless given that it belongs to a multi-millionaire begging the question of why anyone would trash his offer in favour of some dingy public hospital. It simply beggars belief.
We have to understand though that this incessant and reflexive bashing of rich and successful people in Botswana has deep roots and comes a long way. It finds its origins in an ideology whose basic premise is that the only reason why Dada – or any successful businessman for that matter – became rich is because some people became poor. In their book, the rich steal from poor people but the trouble with that prism is that the poor have no money. As the saying goes, you cannot give what you do not have. So in a similar vein the poor cannot give what they don’t have!
This pernicious Marxists ideology of the rich robbing the poor found fertile ground in the young and impressionable minds at our then lone university and other places of higher learning. The truth of the matter of however is that the rich get rich by selling good and services that other people are willing and able to buy. When Dada sells us goods that we are willing and able to buy he becomes rich. If he does not, he makes no money. That is the basis of market capitalism.
The politicians have also either deliberately or unwittingly done a poor job of explaining this basic concept in what can only count as a cheap stunt to win votes. Instead they have also joined in the chorus of bashing the private sector in parliament. None of them is ever prepared to stand and extol the virtues of the private sector as a force for good. They seem to thrive on having a permanent and aggrieved underclass which perpetually complains about the rich skinning them alive.
Our leaders are always quick to find fault at every turn and say how terrible businesses is. Dada is painted as an evil and rich guy. There is a never a moment where they ever celebrate business. So they have also contributed to this unfavourable, charged and irrational view of business people.
What we need to become prosperous economy is having a vibrant pro-business environment which spawns more Dadas. You don’t become a successful economy if you want to distribute misery equally like Cuba. This speaks to the need to remake our economy and propel it to a stage where the cold chain and vaccine logistics for example are contracted out to private enterprise. That is how countries develop and become rich. Through private enterprise and not punishing achievers such as Satar Dada.