Whatever we have achieved over the years can very easily be traced, almost intrinsically to the discovery of diamonds just over four decades ago.
The economic miracle that Botswana has become, with all its soft underbellies has very much been a result of diamonds.
If there is any credit that our leaders have to claim, it has to be that when other governments across the continent were literally plundering and pillaging their natural resources for personal gain, Botswana, for her part put respectable structures in place with which to manage the same resources, hard as it clearly was to equitably distribute the same for the country as a whole.
Erecting the structures was a highly commendable invention by our early national leaders, a trait we shall never be sure just how much their latter day successors have been able to grasp and fully appreciate.
The most appropriate question to ask under the circumstances is, “Have we made the best of diamonds wealth?”
Our answer is: not as much as we are often made to appear, especially by commentators from the West. As Batswana we should raise the bars in as far as our ambitions, hopes, aspirations and goals are concerned.
As a country we entered the international economic hall of fame, not least because of a sustained double digit economic growth in the 1980s, but because of a growth wholly premised on production and sale of diamonds. That growth was followed by the attainment of a middle income status, which though the envy of many a developing country has come with its own challenges given that we still have all the characteristics of a low-end developing country. Development partners have since left our shores as they moved to areas where they felt there was a greater need than what was the case with Botswana.
As many in government are not able to express their frustration, we have often come across as a child who is being punished for working hard in class to achieve the highest score possible notwithstanding their difficult circumstances. While the discovery of diamonds has no doubt been a boon, it has brought its own structural weaknesses which are only now becoming more and more apparent as new challenges emerge on account of the economic meltdown. As a result diamond prices are more than ever before subdued or in worse cases diamonds are simply not being bought.
For Botswana, diamonds have delivered a peculiar kind of Dutch Disease; a failure to create strong institutions.
Because diamonds brought with them loads of money, we have over the years developed a culture of waste, inefficiency, misuse and price unconsciousness.
The waste associated with numerous capital projects, chiefly the power plant in Morupule are a glaring testimony of the legacy bequeathed this nation by infinite amounts of diamond money.
While in the past money was not an issue for Botswana, it all of sudden has become a very big issue hence our collective inability to behave properly when called on to tighten the belts and avoid cost overruns as well as project delays.
The economic meltdown has come at a time when we could not have been more unprepared.
Like everything else, the long-running diamond economic boom was destined to come to an end.
The result is that we have been left behaving exactly like an athlete who finds out that the performance enhancing drug they have always relied on their whole professional life is all of sudden out of production.
The best way out is to go back to basics by creating institutions and establishing a new culture that worships not money and the consumerism it begets, but rather productivity, innovation and efficiency.
