There is understandably a great deal of consternation about Chinese companies dominating the lucrative mega-construction sector. The consternation is actually buyers’ remorse.
Courtesy of the Minister of Infrastructure and Housing Development, Eric Molale, helpfully “getting carried away”, it has emerged that it was Batswana themselves who went to Beijing and asked the Chinese to come to Botswana. Molale made that revelation last Tuesday when he officiated at an engineering forum that was organised by the Engineers Registration Board.
Mega-construction projects that bring in really good money are undertaken by a special set of construction companies in a category called Group E. When the government of President Sir Ketumile Masire embarked on an accelerated land servicing programme, Group E was dominated by foreign-owned companies that Molale identified as Group 5, Wilson Bayly Holmes (WBHO), Murray and Roberts “and all those.” He alleged that when the accelerated land servicing programme began, these companies “formed a cartel – it’s no secret.”
Through the cartel, these companies cornered the market and began “dictating” market prices.
“We did two things which later on also came in to bite us,” said the minister. “First and foremost, the government sent His Honour the Vice President, Rre [Peter] Mmusi, to go and talk to the Chinese to bring us companies and they came. In the first instance, it worked well and at the same time locally, we grew construction companies, selected ones – which were performing – from Grade C to Grade E.”
He identified such companies as SP Construction, Tswana, Boswe, Thoraboroko, Aga Kgalagadi, Chocholoza and Ngandwe.
“We deliberately grew them to Grade E and they did a good job until they were displaced by the Chinese that had come in to help them grow. The point I am making is, when you do these major projects, at their conclusion you must make studies to see what was good, what was bad and if there were pitfalls, how do you avoid them in the future. That is your responsibility as professionals,” said Molale to an audience that was mostly made up of engineers.
He had a copy of a written speech in front of him but would periodically speak off the cuff to elaborate some of the points that he was reading from the speech. The revelation about Mmusi going to China to ask the country for help came amid one such deviation. Catching himself, Molale glanced at his watch and quipped: “I have to go and debate in parliament but I am getting carried away.” Parliament is sitting for its first session of the year which deals with the budget speech.
Not only did the Chinese companies displace citizen-owned ones as Molale stated, they also put down their roots so deep that it is almost impossible to uproot them. Much to the chagrin of those in not just the construction industry but of the general citizenry as well, these companies undertake practically all mega-construction projects. The most recent mega-construction project is that of three traffic interchanges in Gaborone West which is expected to cost P500 million. The interchanges are part of the Botswana Integrated Transport Project and their construction is funded by the government of Botswana in conjunction with the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development and OPEC Fund for International Development.
Oddly, while Chinese companies continue to win contract after contract after contract, grave concern has been expressed about the quality of their workmanship. Among those have publicly expressed such concern is former President Ian Khama. That was in 2013 when he was still in office. Khama told a South African newspaper that in future the government would exercise more discretion in whom it did construction business with. (That future has yet to come.) Taking cue from Khama’s words, the ruling Botswana Democratic Party opened up a conversation on this topic and the comment stream, as that of party’s National Council in that year, was generally negative.
The issue is actually not black and white. The Botswana Institute of Development Policy Analysis research shows that Botswana has no national definition of “construction” and that as a result, Business Botswana and the government (through the National Accounting System) define the term differently.
Molale’s trip down memory lane made a brief stopover in the Block 5 of the early 1990s. Block 5 is a Gaborone West residential district and from the minister’s telling, its establishment got off to an extremely bad start. The contractor built, and on account of poor workmanship, later demolished 500 houses. The reason Molale gave for the demolition was that there was “no quality and therefore, no professionalism.”
More information on the Block 5 saga was provided by Tebogo Tebogo, the Chairperson of the Association of Consulting Engineers Botswana during a panel discussion that was themed around innovative industry transformation through science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Apparently someone got interested enough in the issue to seek more information from the panel during the Q&A session. At this time, Molale was back in parliament.
According to Tebogo, the incident was a result of a new, well-marketed technology that had however, not been properly tested and was of sub-standard quality. This technology was fatefully used in the construction of the houses – with disastrous consequences. The only solution was to demolish the houses and rebuild them.
Molale compared the Block 5 project with a similar building project that happened not too far away – in a part of Gaborone that would be known as Kgale View. There Time Projects built government pool houses “in record time.” The payback period (the amount of time it takes to recover the cost of an investment) was supposed to be 15 years “but was achieved in five years and the houses are still standing.” Molale added: “I don’t know what happened in the intervening period whereby professionalism was replaced by litigation in the courts.”
In one too many instances, dispute over mega-construction projects has been settled at the High Court.
