Botswana has invested a lot of money in educating its citizens. We are probably the only country in Africa that offers free education from primary to tertiary level.
Although we have been able to produce a lot of educated and skilled Batswana, this does not seem to be helping our level of public service productivity. Simply put, our public service productivity is not the sum total of our competencies.
While tax payers are spending huge sums of money in trying to improve productivity, we do not seem to be getting the return on our investment. Unless we change the civil service culture of sycophancy, a lot of our investment in productivity is going to end up down the drain. Public service skills are being lost under the pressure of trying to please authority. Talented men and women who have been educated at great cost to the nation have been reduced to sycophants who have to kow-tow to win the favour of their bosses. This sycophancy is not only executed at the cost of their pride but also their skills.
Our skilled and talented public officers do not have the space to express themselves. They behave as if their lives depend entirely on the authority that appointed them. Their focus has narrowed and they have lost sight of the big picture. Their survival instincts have locked in around pleasing authority instead of doing their job to the best of their ability. Botswana is suffering a lot of setbacks because public officers who surround leadership at all levels tell them what they want to hear and not the truth as they see it.
It is instructive to note that nations that have achieved meaningful and sustainable progress did so on the platform of the culture of excellence. A culture that recognizes and rewards good character, diligence, truthfulness, commitment and dedication to achieving set goals and productivity.
The cost to this economy and our developmental efforts by the misconstruction between loyalty and sycophancy and, at times, the intentional setting aside of competence in favour of other considerations is staggering. The government enclave is a mass of long faces and frown lines because sycophants start by running down their colleagues before starting their enterprise. This, in turn, has a domino effect; poor teamwork, low motivation and loss of interest in the job. When workers don’t like their job, every molehill looks like a mountain. It becomes difficult to fix any problem without agonizing over it or complaining about it first. A frustrated workforce has less energy and, therefore, is inefficient in everything they do. It is also a vicious cycle; Botswana cannot afford to pay its civil servants decent salaries because their productivity does not justify it.
The question is: Can Botswana overcome sycophancy in her developmental challenges? Yes, it can be overcome only when we stand firmly against the causes, perpetrators, effects or dangers of it, and be ready to acknowledge it as a social cancer that needs to be eradicated objectively and with a common purpose by all.
The truth of the matter is that going forward Botswana will rely more on productivity and less on diamonds to fuel her development initiatives.
What we need is not just a change in work ethic but also a show of trust on our people, many of whom have been trained at some of the world’s top universities.
If we do not empower our technical experts to make decisions, then what justification is there that so much public resources have been spent educating and training them.
Botswana Government can no longer afford losing any more money because politicians disregard the sound advice of experts, especially in the civil service.
There used to be a time when money was not so much a big issue for Botswana Government, but not anymore.
This is the reality we have to wake up to as a country ÔÇô and the answer can only be provided by improving our efficiencies and productivity.
