This week, Joshua Galeforolwe, the Chief Executive of PEEPA (government privatization agency), took some of his time to go out of his way to brief the media on the operations of his organization.
That is commendable. It seldom happens in Botswana that Chief Executives find it necessary to open up to the media and allow for frank question and answer sessions which go as far as to allow for candid inputs from the media as happed at PEEPA.
Galeforolwe has had a rough time this past year at the hands of his board.
He fought back and, with the support of Vice President Ian Khama, he won and has kept his job. For how long, we do not know, just as we shall probably never know the real truth on where lie the causes of the fight that erupted between the two parties.
But that is not the purpose of this commentary anyway.
Rather, we want to underscore and draw public attention to the importance of the task assigned PEEPA, which is, simply put, to privatize or transfer a good number of state owned entities into private hands.
We hope PEEPA understands not just the importance and sensitivity of the work they are paid to do.
We hope they also understand the risks as well as the temptations that go with it.
A lot of money is at stake, as are a good number of powerful interests that have, over the years, become entrenched.
Naturally, there will be resistance from some quarters and there will be attempts to manipulate the system.
PEEPA is asked not just to rattle the established comfort zones but, in some cases, to literally dismantle and or obliterate as to render them unrecognizable.
That is not easy. Many organizations have grown to see themselves as sacred cows, with some people within them looking at themselves as Emperors.
It will call for a lot of integrity, assertiveness, fairness and, more importantly, a lot of honesty at PEEPA to win against such interests.
We can only hope PEEPA directors and the executive management have what it takes.
Batswana are, as is to be expected, very skeptical of the whole exercise.
The reason is simple.
Not only do citizens view privatization as the sale of the family silverware, they are also reluctant to give in to what is essentially a request for a leap of faith.
The failure to privatize Air Botswana, not once but twice, has not helped PEEPA, or the responsible ministry to win the much needed patience and indulgence from citizens.
The dirty manner with which the Board of PEEPA and Galeforolwe engaged each other has made outsiders to be even more skeptical and cynical about what could be going on.
PEEPA has been in existence for half a decade or more now. Nobody ever said privatisation was going to be an easy thing. There is a lot of groundwork and behind the scenes work involved. But what people want to see are results, and, to be honest, they have not been forthcoming.
This is not to put all the blame at the doorstep of PEEPA exclusively.
The political leadership, cabinet to be precise, has to take a good share of the blame.
There has been a shocking absence of political goodwill when it came to privatization.
There was no way the privatization process was going to kick start without a declaration of intent from cabinet by way of a Master Plan which would not only outline the candidates for the process, but also help in setting a framework by way of a time table.
This took an inordinate length of time to be put on the table.
Just when the Plan was published, the nation was treated to a dirty and very public brawl between the Board and Chief Executive.
The brawl made primary school boys’ spats look much more civilised.
This only played further into the hands of the skeptics who got even more emboldened in their work to get the process aborted.
With the brawl getting dirtier by the day, skeptics and cynics of privatization shouted: “We told you so. Here they are, the ruling class fighting amongst themselves over who should enrich themselves more with the public assets.”
We can only hope that will not happen. What PEEPA should do is to tell the doubting public what privatization has in it for them.
That is difficult. It is even more difficult when there is not a single example to point to or relate to as an example of a public entity that has been successfully privatized.
We have said before that, as The Sunday Standard, we support the process of privatisation as an inescapable public sector reform, which we can only postpone at our peril as a nation.
But the exercise must be fair, principled and above all transparent otherwise it will have so big a backlash that the nation would wish it had never been started.
The world is awash with examples of privatisation gone terribly wrong. We hope PEEPA will avoid that.
