Just like the former President Ian Khama’s 5Ds road map that failed before it could even take off, President Masisi’s much talked about Reset Agenda is bound to follow the same route because it will be built on the same faulty foundation the 5Ds were. While I am not aware whether or not the two road maps were conceived after an in depth analysis to find where the impediments could be going forward, I am not persuaded such was the case. A lot of impediments which rendered the 5Ds a complete failure still exist for the Reset Agenda. It should be fair to suggest failure to perform the said in depth analysis is because the road maps are the preserve of the initiator where they cannot be taken to task by anybody or any authority. If they succeed, it’s all well and good and if they do not, a simple hard luck.
By their very nature, road maps like the Reset Agenda are meant to impact the broader society positively in more ways than one. As a consequence, a number of structural and administrative areas must be fully prepared in order to usher a road map like the Reset Agenda. One such area will be the civil service. Is the present civil service fully prepared for the Reset Agenda? No should be the answer. The service has been politicised for the longest time and still is the case and therefore toxic to deliver normal services to the public. There is no way a civil service in not only poor but bad state can deliver the Agenda. It is suggested in some quarters that there are loyalties to the former President Khama by some civil servants at all levels who are hell bent in sabotaging the objectives of President Masisi’s government. Whether this is true or not is a subject for another day. The former President has said it himself that he receives information from some within government citing as recently as last week that he received information from judges on some of the issues surrounding him. Assuming this is the true, it will tell us the civil service is so divided and toxic as already alluded to. Without saying it, the toxicity does not augur well for the Reset Agenda. The other point worth noting about the civil service is the frequent movements of personnel from one position to the other. This causes instability of sorts because individuals are not allowed to stay in one position for a longer period in order to acclimatise and learn the overall requirements of departments and ministries wherein they could identify challenges and come up with problem solving mechanisms. In the process of shifting personnel as frequently as it has become the norm, personnel with the necessary and desirable institutional memories of the workings of the public service are lost either through purging and questionable terminations of contracts. The importance of institutional memory for an institution as large as the civil service cannot be over emphasised in the context of the Agenda.
Public sector trade unions whose members are civil servants are undoubtedly crucial to the success of the Reset Agenda in more ways than one. Expectedly, it is crucial as well for the public sector trade unions to be taken on board to facilitate and ensure the Agenda succeeds. At the beginning of his term, President Masisi appeared to be intent on working very closely with the trade unions where he promised them this and that. One of the critical promises he made was the resuscitation of the Public Service Bargaining Council (PSBC) that was expected to have taken off by September 2018 five months after his inauguration. With the PSBC pitifully so dysfunctional, it means public service workers’ issues are discussed and determined through what one could term unorthodox platforms. As I write, government is still tripping over the issue over three and a half years after the promise was made. Despite government trying to paint the relationship with public sector trade unions as cosy as one could imagine, recent statements from some of these public sector trade unions suggest such relationship could very well be broken down irretrievably until there is light at the end of the tunnel. Public sector trade unions like the Botswana Nurses Unions are still gravely aggrieved by the manner government treated them at the beginning of, and during the Covid-19 pandemic in terms of the shortage of personal protective equipment and the conditions they worked under throughout the peak of the pandemic to date. The other deep rooted issue for the trade unions is the partial implementation of the Pemandu Report which they claim were and are still detrimental to them. Given these issues in so far as public sector trade unions are concerned, it is safe to reason the implementation and success of the Reset Agenda remains somewhat far-fetched if not doubtful road map to succeed.
Is the country too happy to receive and embrace the Reset Agenda? Not by any wildest of the imagination. I am relying on the 2022 World Happiness Report itself a publication of the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network wherein it lists Botswana at number 146 out of 149 countries the saddest being Afghanistan at 149. The Report ranks countries ‘by how happy their citizens perceive themselves to be…. and that the report is based ‘on two key ideas, (1) happiness or life evaluation measured through opinion surveys and (2) identifying key elements that determine well-being and life evaluation across countries’. Predictably, government has rejected the report via a statement which says in part ‘We are aware of the report and our view is that its findings are just a compilation of unscientific perceptions by experts. We do not know how they measure all those perceptions’. I wonder if the same misgivings would be suggested had the report said Batswana are a happy people. It is important to note this report is contested by other persons far from our shores like Noah Feldman who is a Harvard law Professor. Be that as it may, are Batswana themselves and out of the report findings, a happy people or not? The incontrovertible facts on the ground perfectly placed to render Batswana an unhappy people are the socio-economic circumstances we find ourselves in. These are inter alia the ever increasing unemployment figures; the slim chances of job seekers ever finding a job; the high cost of living brought about by the ever increasing taxes on citizens; limited opportunities for the youth to sustain themselves; the poor performance of students in primary and high schools and perhaps the more critical above all else, the lackadaisical attitude and conduct of tackling runaway corruption. These on their own are reasons enough to render Batswana an unhappy people. With or without the World Happiness Report, it is fair to suggest Batswana are seriously unhappy.
With Botswana still deeply engulfed in the above issues and challenges, it is my considered view that meaningful paradigm shift is imperative for the Reset Agenda to be implemented. Like I said in the paragraphs above, former President Khama unveiled his own 5Ds roadmap under similar circumstances yet nothing to write home about was the outcome. Reset Agenda like is more likely to suffer the same fate as did the 5Ds. Conducive conditions should exist for it to earn overwhelming buy-in from citizens. Otherwise, it will be recorded in history as a good roadmap that failed because it was built on faulty foundation. I am prepared to be persuaded otherwise as always. Judge for Yourself!
‘No one is safe until everyone is safe’ Covid-19 is still our immediate threat. Let us continue to exercise extreme care by adhering to all protocols. It is our individual and collective duty to do so.