No doubt, our economy is on a free fall. If the sorrowful economic situation currently unfolding in our country does not trouble you, then you surely need that ‘Prophet of Doom’. As it stands, we are all already doomed. I recently came across an analytical preview of our country’s economy, put together by a colleague and business writer, Keabetswe Newel of the Business Weekly & Review. Newel reports that President Ian Khama’s government is failing to balance the national budget. Parastatals are retrenching. BURS tax revenue is on the decline. Government’s recruitment body, the Department of Public Service Management (DPSM) has issued a directive that no vacancies ought to be filled. SACU revenue is expected to decline. Budget deficit has widened. Government has started to draw from the reserves. That is not all. I know of some companies that do business with government and are failing to pay staff salaries because government is failing to pay for services rendered. Public enterprises are shutting down leaving many people jobless. Private tertiary institutions are withholding graduates’ certificates because government has failed to pay for their tuition fees as agreed. The future looks bleak for everyone. Investors are leaving the country in droves. Landlords are struggling to secure tenants. Civil servants are paid peanuts while the cost of living gets higher by the day. Surprisingly, even as government wants everyone to believe public coffers are drying up, there is only one man whose needs and wants continue to be financed. Government has no money to rescue public enterprises and save thousands of jobs but the same government has money to procure fighter jets worth billions of Pula. Government is spending buckets and buckets of money on purchasing espionage equipment to spy on citizens. Government continues, without fail, to host events that are known to be of Khama’s personal hobbies. Millions of Pula is being spent annually to host events such as the Khawa Dune Challenge, Makgadikgadi Epic and the Air Show. All these events cost a lot of money that could be channelled towards our ailing economic but that is not happening because those events hold dear to President Khama. Government continues to pump money on Khama’s populist programs that have no positive impact on the country’s economy. His pet projects continue to get the lion’s share of the national budget despite their zero contribution to the economy. Almost every day, government comes up with initiatives that suck money from the citizens and there is no accountability to these funds. Sadly, in the midst of all this madness, we have a Finance Minister who spent many years at school learning economics. Kenneth Matambo is said to be an astute economist. Those who know him well paint him as an economist par excellence. Unfortunately, his brains appear to have been rendered useless by the regime he currently serves. While he knows the right things to do, Matambo is forced to do all the wrong things in order to keep his job. I have talked to many economists who work under Matambo and they cannot hide their frustrations. They say, as per their job descriptions and given their qualifications, they compile national budget projections and give priority to projects that make economic sense and viability. The poor officers spend so much time allocating national funds to national projects but once they are done with their submissions and waiting for Matambo do deliver these submissions through the National Budget Speech, directives would come in. Permanent Secretaries would come in and instruct economic planners to change the budget and allocate some funds to Khama’s preferred projects. Khama has the tendency to announce some of his pet projects spontaneously at his endless Kgotla meetings, without prior consultation with Matambo who holds the national purse. Because what Khama wants Khama gets, Matambo will then be forced to include Khama’s unbudgeted projects in the national budget and sacrifice some very important national projects. Matambo is no different from those journalists at the Mass Media Complex. While they are trained to be journalists, government journalists are not allowed to practice what they learned at school. Their sole mandate is to report only that which Khama and his cabinet ministers want the public to hear. They are not journalists but mere reporters. The same goes for Matambo. While he is a qualified economist who knows everything about economic prudence, his role has been trimmed to that of a mere implementer. He exists only to allocate funds to projects that are sanctioned by Khama. It is a pity that in Africa, intelligent people allow themselves to act stupidly in their quest to keep their jobs and retain authority. Matambo may be an intelligent chap but for as long as he associates with a dunderhead regime, his intelligence remains overrated and useless. Matambo could be telling his friends that deep down his heart he is against all these stupid spending of public funds on populist programs but for as long as he remains the one distributing money on them, he is just as guilty. I just don’t understand why intelligent people continue to soil their reputation by associating with Khama’s unprincipled and heartless regime which has no shame buying fighter jets and guns while refusing to build hospitals and schools for the nation.
[email protected] Twitter:@kuvuki
