I have been following the BDC Saga for sometime…first I would like to salute the Board of BDC and the leadership for appointing the women. Increasingly we are having more and more women dominating the boardrooms; competent, I believe; they just happened to be women; very soon it won’t be an exception to have female leadership dominating the boardroom; I join our leadership, men included, and the rest of the nation in saluting such advancement in gender equity, so far as corporate leadership is concerned; gone are the days when for one to access positions of power and influence, they had to prove two credentials: either for the Father to be powerful or the husband to be powerful; those dark days are indeed behind us!
Nonetheless, the rules seem to be tougher for women; society seems to be more unforgiving for women; Could it be a case of a student who finds themselves with their mother for a class teacher; I still remember how strict the mum cum class teacher could be when it comes to their own child; they were beaten the most and rules were stricter; it was always a tight robe to walk on; I can’t help but feel this could be a reality in gender issues in the present age; The expectations seem to be higher for women than for men; society seems to be more unforgiving and stricter for women than its for men; it’s like women must prove to be more deserving of the positions they get; not so different from the social scene; a classic case being where a man can cheat his wife publicly 10x or more and should the woman attempt to cheat…our ears would go deaf from the public outcry and rejection and condemnation. It’s always tough for a woman;
As the BDC saga unfolded, I noted that the partner in question was inappropriate as reported; nonetheless, the project has progressed to over 70% complete; I also noted that as much as no market contracts were signed as reported in some media, Botswana doesn’t not have a glass manufacturing outfit and yes through the EDD project, glass is one of the products targeted for import substitution; government imports a lot of glass and we cannot discount that the need exists and the market is robust and ready; maybe this is a question of interrogating the value chain for proper linkages and systems infrastructure being in place; In a backhanded way I was encouraged that the partner in question did not have much of experience and financial strength; which goes on to show and pioneer in fact that the project management capacity of BDC is sufficient to pull through a project, even if they have partnered with a novice; there is an opportunity for us Batswana as we have been locked out for lack of technical experience; should this project be commissioned, there is no reason why we can’t, as novices, partner with BDC for BIG BIG projects regardless of our technical strength; the glass project has proved to us that BDC project management and financial and technical strength is sufficient to pull us through;
Whilst this may seem to be wishful thinking or too basic an overview of the seriousness of the alleged acts of corruption; whilst I do not have any intention go piba mpa ka mabele; why BDC and why BDC alone; why name- and-shame them when with other similar occurrences bank statements of similar culprits are not splashed in the papers; of late we have had a number of reports of some road projects overshooting by hundreds of millions, some projects hemorrhaging millions per day; some multibillion pula outsourcing contracts that were concluded in boardrooms with limited transparency at least as far as the public is concerned; this is not to suggest that we drop BDC but how about extending our scope of parliamentary interest and investigations; Project management in Botswana is a challenge; such a challenge that government had to come up with GICO; such a challenge that project monitoring had to be elevated to the VP’s Portfolio; when projects take longer, and the oversight is weak, there is always a potential for corruption; people lose focus, and when staff stay longer in a company, they get used to the rules and there is a potential to take shortcuts; to such an extent it becomes a culture; Loyalty is good and yes it should be celebrated but when you stay longer you develop your own rule book and over time it slowly manifests as corruption.
When I think about it, this is a classic case of the failure of corporate governance in Botswana; why did it take so long for PAC to extend its mandate to BDC and how come all along the fuducial oversight could not pick the irregularities of the Glass project; what other projects are ongoing at BDC; what is the success rate and when did the train get off the rails; if it’s off the rails at all?
I sometimes wonder if the ladies could have explained themselves better had the media been gender equitable; not that I’m pointing fingers but all the journalists are men; Parliament is predominately male almost all male; it’s the men who are writing the story, it is the men who are asking the questions; all in all I believe we have been too harsh; I believe that it’s not as bad as we think; As much as I believe that it’s in the best interests of the public that the investigations be carried out by the supreme body of the land ÔÇô Parliament; I also believe its heavy handed on the part of BDC women; How about if Parliament aggregated a number of these eye catching projects/ organizations and met to review and further investigate them; Given the limitation of time, I don’t see Parliament investigating another parastatal or government funded project any time soon, at least not before 2014;
Maybe to balance the scales, they should consider changing the DCEC Act to force it to report its investigations to Parliament; I somehow fear that there could be a risk of the BDC Report being sensationalized as political fodder unlike the previous reports of other parastatals facing the same allegations; I believe that the response has been heavy handed given that the allegations of corruption at BDC are not unique and we still have reports of such from other similar institutions locked safely elsewhere.
Nonetheless I thank GOD for the BDC women for breaking the glass ceiling and opening the space for more women to follow; let their demise not be a demotivation for the young girl’s ambition for greater corporate success; Let it motivate the young ladies to pursue a REDO and not only reach the heights of corporate success but reach it and stay there without blemish.
