President Mokgweetsi Masisi on Friday afternoon gave an hour long interview to private radio station – Duma FM. Together with the radio host – Dignash Morapedi, President Masisi spoke at length about his administration’s brainchild strategy – The Reset Agenda.
The drafters of the Reset Agenda seems to have come up with it on recognition that a greater connection between leaders and the people they lead has great potential to effect the most change needed at any given time. So through the Reset Agenda, President Masisi and the drafters seek to advance the lives of Batswana with the targeted starting point being ‘mind set change’ on the part of Batswana.
What one wonders though is whether, given the socio-economic problems bedeviling this nation, can the citizens of this country, more especially those at the lower end of the economic ladder willingly change their minds? Can it take a few Kgotla meetings and selected media interviews for example, to get Batswana to change their perception about corruption, nepotism or just maladministration in general? In other words, can Batswana cheerfully change their mind-sets when a majority of them believe that their leaders are not delivering the kind of governance which is more meaningful and impactful, more especially to those outside the leader’s bubble?
As said in this space before, if President Masisi and his team want to see a success of the Reset Agenda, they should consider conducting a mini-research parallel to the implementation of this Agenda. The data gathering aspect of this research should optimally focus on understanding Batswana’s perception on the Reset Agenda and its relation to their current socio-economic situation. The outcome of such research will highlight amongst other things what Batswana have picked from the Reset Agenda in terms of opportunities, barriers and even fears. The fact of the matter is that the poor and the middle class of this country are facing their greatest threats possibly since the days of Sir Ketumile Masire as president. To expect them to just wake up one morning and “think positively” is same as expecting Botswana to be a leader in producing progressive leaders.
The tone of President Masisi during the Friday radio interview suggests that he believes that a majority of Batswana are not ‘hopeful’ or ‘positive’ enough. To say that poor people don’t have enough hope, tenacity and aspiration is to deny their agency as well as the size of the structural odds they face. President Masisi and drafters of the Reset Agenda should remember that instilling hope without skills or financial resources is unlikely to be enough to lift our people out of poverty. This is not to say we should disregard the message of being ‘hopeful’, or ‘positive’ but rather saying our main target should be confronting structures and actors that have not only failed to address poverty in Botswana but may also have reinforced the nature of uneven development across our country.
Given the socio-economic problems in this country, the Masisi administration should make sure that it gives real effect to the reform promises made through the Reset Agenda. If it wants to start getting this nation out of the moneylessness, landlessness and joblessness trap which it has long languished in, the Masisi administration should not just talk about positivity but also wear shows that would give them an idea of what scarcity and instability feel like. The trouble for the Masisi administration’s Reset Agenda and its ‘mind changing’ goal is that over the years there has been very little social mobility. Of course little social mobility happens in a policy environment that sustains inequality of opportunity like ours. Infact the World Bank highlights in one of its recent reports, the need for Botswana and other SACU member states to make key economic and policy changes relating to wealth distribution. The report draws SACU government’s attention to the policy failures that continue to sustain high levels of inequality despite the region’s high rating as one with the most redistributive spending in the world, particularly on education and health. As part of the strategy to make the Reset Agenda work, the Masisi administration must give serious thought to the World Bank’s recommendations on inequality and policy failures in Botswana.
In a country that is highly unequal in so many ways is now clear after the Covid 19 pandemic that the middle class and the poor’s financial buffers are now thinner. When a crisis like Covid 19 comes—whether to an individual, a group, or an entire society—starting points matter. Those who have prepared and have some reserves fare better than those who have not. As for the middle class and the poor in Botswana, the economic fallout from the pandemic has been severe. As reported on one of the economic stories in this edition, Botswana is now facing stagflation and the question is: what can the President’s Reset agenda do to reverse or at bare minimum slow down the impacts of it? – This a question one would have thought the Duma FM host should have asked our dear leader. The #Bottomline though is that it is more urgent than before that Botswana pull the growth levers that are within its control to ensure that its citizens accumulate wealth that will save their sanity while securing their future.
