The country’s light bulb moment has dawned following the bitter public service strike that for 6 weeks brought depressive, chilly, starless nights which ushered in gloomy days featuring the scary monster borne from darkness’s bad dreams to rear a nightmarish face into day-break refusing to fade into obscurity.
With the bad-dreams of the night turning into the realities of the day, the picture of the new future looks bleak as negative emotions of revenge ooze from animalistic hearts and minds intoxicated with vindictiveness manifested in the now trademark obsessive propensity to purge the nation of divergent thought and ideas.
The phenomenal employee relations tragedy had become a negative zero-sum game with the employer adopting a hardline stance claiming responsible stewardship as custodian of national economic resources, whilst thwarting the demands of nearly 100 000 public service workers calling for what they saw as a deserved salary adjustment after 3 consecutive recession years without a pay rise.
As the showdown between government and striking public service employees continued to rage, before the current temporary lull, both parties intiatilly played a posturing game from their entrenched positions, whilst the nation tasted its first ever major industrial upheaval and endured unprecedented turmoil as the new historical leaf was turned.
Whilst the nation watched as the unions adjusted their demands in a principled manner to accommodate the mutual interests of employees and their employer, government entrenched its negotiation position. By so doing those invested with legal authority declared war on public service workers by drawing hitherto non-existent boundaries to demarcate the divergent interests of those who have won the mandate to rule and those who accorded them the power to exercise legal authority over national affairs.
At the centre of the ruptuous altercation were the interests of the legal authority (institution and strong men) hell bent on restoring a balanced budget and the interests of the workers determined to use the collective power of numbers to attract a salary adjustment. The Government’s intention to balance the books is laudable but its attitude of aiming to do so at all costs smacks of short-termism which in the long term could negate the signs of recovery that are already showing.
A more long term budget balancing strategy could bring about more sustainable results than embracing an austere vision of the national economy that limits the scope of thinking to railrroading straightjacket solutions to tame expenditure expansion.
The management of the employment relationship which Governemnt as an employer should prioritise during times of change is not an arena for political gaming and point scoring. With economic recovery beckoning, it could be counterproductive for public sector top managers to stray away from proactively managing the relationship government has with its employees. They are accountable for managing the employment relationship and not for sorting out employee unions.
The quest to attain a competitive economy should be pursued in unison with the zeal for a just society in an environment of mutual understanding and respect. The systematic brakewalling against employees who disagreed with the position maintained in dealing with their demands for salary adjustments can only breed bad blood and result in non-productive relationship that impacts economic performance worse than the current deficit.
The determination to purge, banish, band and label some citizens and cleanse the nation and its constituencies of divergent ideas flowing from the richness of the nation’s ecclectic assets of individuals, groups, cultures and institutions does not reflect emotional maturity. Opting to create a dysfunctional mass of praise poets, automated bureaucrats, economic adventurers, soldiers of fortune, power hangers-on and clowns, can onlyl deliver us back to Africa.
A budget deficit is a common economic phenomenon representing a case where one is spending more than the income they expect to receive from different revenue sources. In some countries it is referred to as the public sector net cash requirement. In deficit situations Governments would draw from any accumulated fiscal resources or might be forced to borrow from outside sources.
The word ‘deficit’ is therefore neither swear word nor blasphemy but a common phenomenon in economies across the globe. Deficits are inevitable because national economies are affected by a multiplicity of forces, some within their control and others outside. Managing deficits strategically is not limited to cutting expenditures but could be attained through targeted investment aimed at boosting growth and stimulating jobs as well as fighting graft and preventing waste.
The prevailing thinking in Botswana of viewing employees as an expense to be minimised reflects a paradigm that no longer holds water as a point of reference for managing in the 21st century. In today’s times human capital should be viewed as more than a strategic asset but the only remaining sustainable source of economic prosperity. Following economic slumps, it should be to talent that the country should focus on in order to return the economy from gloom and doom to health and resilience.
Recently and until the courts made a final decision, speaking for the Basarwa of the CKGR was an abomination and a crime against the state that had declared war on a section of own people. These development was complemented by the generous allocation of huge resources to counter the reputational impact of responses of external allies and sympathisers courted by the Basarwa after realising the futility of fighting an internal losing battle against an infallible system that appears programmed to win and/or make its adversaries to lose (even if system also lost).
As the Basarwa battle raged all those who dared raise their voice were indiscriminately painted red, by so doing opening a new historical chapter where those wielding legal power exercised it legally and unapologeticaly against the interests of those who assigned them the mandate. The interests of remaining and increasing political power and reinforcing it with economic power when opportunities arose meant that in the new era, the only legitimate interests were of those with legal power legitimised through a popular aliance with sections of the poor, the unemployed and the out of school.
In the case of the public service strike, what started of as an employment relationship dispute later degenerated into a flexing of muscles between the government of the people, by the people and for the people against the workers, who together with their hundreds of thousands of children and other dependents, including their parents and relatives, constitute the majority of the country’s electoral force.
Once more, I am reminded of my origins as an African and of the nature of legal authorities in Africa. Whether brought in through the ballot box or through other means, the authorities are infamous for their obsessive and compulsive focus on building a formidable security aparatus with heavy arsenals of asorted weaponry that are practised on citizens whenever the interests of the rulers diverge from those of the ruled.
In civilised democracies, security assets exist to protect homelands against enemy crusaders and to advance national interest rather than to uphold the interests of a few in power. In these countries political legitimany is not simply enveloped in the legality of the actions of those who hold the mandate but is defined in terms of convergence of interests between the people (source of mandate) and those who have been invested with the custody of political office.
The stormy relations between the Government and public service employee unions had been brewing for sometime since the unions won the battle to be legalised and transformed from ‘sweet heart’ associations that did not have any bargaining powers. The Public Service Act of 2009 which gave birth to the new public service trade unionism transformed both the landscape within which public servants and their employers dealt with each other and more especially the nature of the relationship itself.
Soon after the passing of the legislation, the unions exposed a major weakness of the Employer ÔÇô lack of preparedness borne from poor understanding of the implications of the new legisaltion on the management of the employment relations. Rather than learn by thoroughly analysing the implications of the new legislation so that they could proactively put in place appropriate interventions for building collaborative relations, top public service managers, chose to continue with their one-best-way law enforcement approach to people management.
True to to tradition, no one todate has shouldered the accountability for creating the necessary capability in the public service for managing the new employment relationship and up to now, save for the reactions to the volcanic eruptions of discontent, no coherent strategy has been crafted to respond positively to the emerging dynamics.
The poverty of leadership in a desert of poor strategic readiness combined with lack of professinalism in dealing with human capital issues have once against come to the forefront as the key priorities of public service reform in the next strategy cycle.
Thus, the seeds of industrial action by public servants were planted by unaccountable automated bureaucrats through acts of ommission, negligence and ignorance. This lot contributed to the current crisis by producing the bitter fruits that were harvested using a deficit-reduction matchet from land tilled in an economic recovery context by executive control freaks. To heal and move forward requires a detoxification process followed by organic fertilisation of the growing ground so that competent and well compensated workers who share the objectives of the employer can go beyond the call of duty to deliver services of value to the public.
The country does not need to see a display of might but a show of trust and transparency with the truth being center stage to genuinely win the hearts and minds of people. Attempts at the manipulation of people through deliberate falsehoods and half-truths have no room around the table on which the long-term solution to the current crisis could be sought as a collaborative national project. It is imp0rtant to move a step back, use more brain and less brawn, to redefine the problem and together find and refine the solution.
Jowitt Mbongwe is a former journalist and now Managing Director of the management consulting firm – Global Consult. He can be reached on telephone 3935758.
