Beneath the bohemian air around Richard White ÔÇô the unshaven beard, denim shorts, rolled shirt sleeves, and slip-ons ÔÇô is a critical mind that knows no holy cows. From where he stands, there is bad news. And there is good news. The bad news is that a lot is wrong with Botswana. The good news is that it can be fixed.
Part of the rot he has observed is in tribal land administration. A former chairperson of Kgalagadi Land Board, who is now an ordinary board member, White has very low regard for the way land boards are constituted. A major source of the problem is that the land board secretary, who is the chief executive, tends to influence the land board selection committee to approve candidates who wish to stand for elections to the board. Subsequently the board secretary would recommend to the minister of lands and housing candidates for appointment who will not stand in his (the board secretary’s) way.
White uses colourful imagery to describe this arrangement: it’s tantamount to the mice hiring the cat. The result is that land boards are filled with members who are effectively accountable to the board secretary ÔÇô not the other way round. This leads to unchecked corruption perpetuated by land board staff because the board members are disempowered and frightened to take action. The few board members who are bold enough to stand up to the officials are either marginalized or even removed from the board. He cites two instances. There was the case of a former Kgalagadi Land Board chairperson in the 1990s who was removed from the board because he had fought to rein in a corrupt board secretary who had hoodwinked the board to allocate three livestock boreholes in wildlife areas in violation of the rules. The other illustration is White’s own personal experience ÔÇô three failed attempts to remove him in the past four years that he has been in the board.
White traces the servility of the boards to the bad pay ÔÇô a monthly responsibility allowance of P5 000 and a sitting allowance of P20 per hour. The boards, therefore, do not attract a good calibre of members. For those who ultimately end up in such positions, the allowances are a major source of income ÔÇô and they want to claw onto the posts.
“The allowance is my main regular source of income as well,” concedes White. “But I’m not going to starve [if removed from the board] because I have a decent herd of cattle as well as a few other investments. But for many members, if they were thrown out they would be in serious financial trouble.”
White talks of a frenzied countrywide drive to parcel out communal grazing land to the rich and politically well-connected in the form of ranches. He finds the economic argument for such wholesome privatization of communal land very weak.
“Communal occupancy is very productive, more than private occupancy. There are strong indications that it is economically and biologically efficient. A lot of Batswana don’t want their land to be parceled out ÔÇô and this goes for the vast majority. We are Batswana. We have our own system that is flexible and evolved over many years and it works. We need to develop the communal system and not replace it,” he says.
His call for a more careful and prudent approach to handling of land stems from deep concern that the land supports a large number of the rural poor, as well as a lot of people in urban areas, who are the major investors in cattle.
He points to Scotland as an example of a system which practices successful communal occupancy that enables people to survive in what is an extremely harsh environment that is very parallel to the Kgalagadi.
“The idea that that communal land is outdated is wrong. In areas that have low rainfalls and low carrying capacity fencing is not an option, and most of Botswana has low rainfall. The elite are serving their own interests by grabbing land for personal use. It’s true there is a role for privately held land because there are things you can do in fenced land. There needs to be a balance between the two. Botswana’s interest would be best served by maintaining a large proportion of land as communal,” he argues.
Over the years, White has observed a steady erosion of public confidence in land boards to a point where they are perceived as cesspools of corruption. To restore such confidence, he points out, board members need to be given independence, and the board secretary should not have the power to recommend removal of members except for gross misdemeanours.
So what is the future of the small farmer given the rapid privatization of grazing land? White’s theory is that the small farmer is not going to disappear because his natural environment ÔÇô the communal system ÔÇô will resist attempts to obliterate it, and will be a feature for a long time.
“But unless we address the concerns of the small farmer he is going to be impoverished and marginalized. There is a lot we can do, and the door is still open. What is needed is a rethink of the role of the ministry of agriculture, and stop privatization of communal land. The ministry of agriculture has become a machine to hand out subsidies mainly to the rich and well-off. It’s lacking in provision of meaningful agricultural technical skills to uplift rural people,” White says.
Apparently, other national institutions do not score any better in the public trust index. A case in point is the Directorate on Corruption and Economic Crime (DCEC). White’s major gripe with DCEC as currently established is that it is not independent.
“Where information is given (to DCEC) about somebody that OP (Office of the President) seeks to protect, an instruction is given to DCEC to lay off. DCEC should cease to be controlled by OP. It should report to an Anti-Corruption Commission which should report to Parliament. The executive should have no say in it and nothing to do with it. The Commission should be chaired by a High Court judge. It should have a nominee from Attorney General’s Chambers, an appointee of the Law Society to represent the private sector of the law. The Auditor General should appoint a member, and so should the professional body that regulates accountants. The leader of opposition should nominate a member as well. That would lead to real distribution of power in the political landscape and would be enormously beneficial.
“If you look at well-developed democracies, power is distributed. Low officials have the power to say ‘no’ to senior officials ÔÇô and they can’t be fired for that. It limits the power of the politicians and it’s a big curb to corruption,” he says.
He holds that a major problem about Botswana is that too few people have too much power. That’s why he supports the call for a reduction of the executive powers that Botswana’s constitution bestows on the president.
“If you have a Seretse who listens to the people around him, it might be fine (to give the president such powers). But the problem is that you are not always going to have a Seretse in the State House. We now have Ian who is a loner, and does not debate any issue,” White makes a comparison between the first and fourth presidents ÔÇô father and son; one said to have been a keen listener who stayed close to advice, and the other caricatured as dictatorial with no patience for the democratic process.
White says part of the manifestation of a leadership that pursues wrong priorities is reflected in misallocation of national resources. He gives the rising crime tide as an illustration.
“Why are there so many houses with high security walls and electric fences? Why is there a proliferation of private security companies? It’s because the police are not able to contain crime due to 35 years of underinvestment in the police service, and overinvestment in the military,” he says.
One debate that White wishes the nation could engage in is whether the Botswana Defence Force is still relevant. Besides the fact that he doesn’t give the BDF a fighting chance against any of the neighbouring armies, with the exception of Namibia, he points out that the way to deal with our neighbours is political.
“Nobody has ever asked what we need an army for. What we need is a defence review to analyse possible threats to our security and how to address them. South Africa is reducing the size of their armed forces because they have conducted this exercise, though flawed. We never have, and the reason is simple. Ian likes his toys. So rationale thought has never been applied,” he says. “Imagine the resources tied up in the BDF ÔÇô land, manpower, equipment, and what we could do with them.”
He finds the state of Botswana’s politics to disempower the voters because for the most part political discourse is not about policy, but personalities. It doesn’t help much that the electorate is not very sophisticated to the extent that there is tribal allegiance to political parties, even when the organization is dysfunctional.
“BCP seems to be the only party that has defined its space. They are the party really making political running. Ndelu (Seretse) is being prosecuted because Dumelang (Saleshando) asked uncomfortable questions in Parliament,” White says about the contribution of the Botswana Congress Party leader.
