The power outages currently engulfing the nation reach far beyond the sickening tragedy that is Morupule “B”.
Looked at a deeper context, the outages are a splendid metaphor for a sick nation; a nation groping in the dark when it comes to establishing a directional campus for its moral values.
Just as the defective Morupule power station is not able to produce enough energy to light the country, as a people we too do not have enough reserves of strength within to shed light on just who we really want to be.
Curiously, when it comes to power outages, government approach is to “see no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil.”
It is a defective one-size-fits-all template that our Government is deploying with reckless abandon.
Our Government is avoiding facing up to the power crisis.
There seems to be a vague assumption that by not talking about the energy troubles, those problems will somehow resolve themselves.
They are in denial.
Spurning every question coming their way can never by itself be a solution.
In part the strategy not to even talk about the crisis, much less own up to it signals an absence of credible political leadership. More than that it is a glaring example of a leadership that crudely spurns accountability.
Rather than work hard at resolving the power outages that are in the whole making it difficult for the economy to recover, our government, ably assisted by the ruling party cadres is now working hard at entrenching these power outages as part of nation’s inescapable mythology.
That mythology includes creating an impression that God has had a hand in it all and that even under a different establishment, the power cuts would still be with us.
They are living in a dream world.
And for that we should refuse to accept that. Government casual behavior has put us down the path of economic ruin.
Accepting their mythology would further drive us down the path of moral decadence.
These power cuts are man-made. They are a result of a callous clientelism and a corrupt procurement system.
And evidence is there to bears us out.
At the bidding stages of Morupule “B” the Chinese Embassy in Gaborone advised Botswana government against the preferred Chinese contractor that was chosen to build the power station.
As a friendly state, China warned the Government of Botswana that the said contractor was not known in China for undertaking projects of that magnitude.
It is important to point out that for Botswana, Morupule “B’ was not only huge in magnitude ÔÇô by far the single biggest capital project ever undertaken in the country ÔÇô it also was of immense strategic, security and economic importance.
Disregarding advice from the Chinese Government, Botswana went ahead nonetheless and chose the same contractor.
To their credit, our much discredited intelligence services (DIS) also waded in and warned against the same contractor.
Famous for always getting their way, on this instance they too were given a cold shoulder.
In the meantime, South Africa, on which we had thus far relied effectively for all our electricity needs were having their own internal issues pertaining to supply and demand.
Following the liberation of that country more and more people who had hitherto been left out of the power grid were now being connected.
Many of that country’s power plants were reaching the end of their life span. The democratic government of that country had to contend with growing expectations among black people, top of which included access to electricity, leading to demand that was fast outstripping supply.
And crucially, the favourable terms power supply agreement between Botswana and South Africa was also coming to an end.
The rest is history.
Public confidence in our government has been eroded to the lowest levels in a long time.
One would perhaps go back to the early 1990s during the land related corruption scandals to see anything resembling the collapse of public trust in a government in power.
Even the political elites are shocked at a diminishing sense of self-preservation that they had long associated with their vanguard that is the BDP.
How can it be right that nobody in Government has taken the fall as ca result of the failures of a project that has cost the nation so much.
We are a sick nation.
Electricity or the lack of it is currently the anchor topic on every conversation.
Admittedly, lack of electricity is the single most obvious and indeed most glaring example of our failure as people.
But then it is only a signals of a much greater social rot.
In the mist of all this darkness we should turn the light within and use the power tragedy to search for solutions to the bigger social problems facing us.
