The meaning, application and implications of the general principles of good governance and democratic practices are now common knowledge, though the extent of interpretation and appreciation does vary from one context to the next.┬á We are known as one of Africa’s old democracies and if reports and surveys of some known international agencies are anything to go by, we are also known for a relatively good adherence to principles of good governance, in particular transparency and accountability. It is these two principles that I will reflect on this week on account of what the country has been witnessing over the last few years. The last five or more years has seen two seemingly contradictory expositions dominate the public debate with respect to these two principles of good governance.
The principles of transparency and accountability by governments are mutually reinforcing and provide a chance for citizens to be part of the public policy discourse and eventually enhance their input into decision making and development outcomes. Briefly, transparency requires that public officials in general, managers and directors of various companies and organizations, including boards of trustees and administration, act in a manner that is visible, predictable and understood to be promoting citizen participation and accountability by government.
The practical implication of the above is that it is not always enough for public institutions to make information available to the public but when in the process certain amounts of information remain raw in the eyes of the public, this may instead lead to opacity. When the public experiences this opaque scenario, it creates its own interpretation of the unknown facts and this in turn develops into perceptions that may be wrong or wright. When such developments becomes public domain then managing these perceptions by government becomes a night mare. We seemingly are experiencing a few of these situations in our public debates.
Accountability on the other side implies and demands that the network of relationships between and among officials in public, private and voluntary sectors, ensures that individuals and groups in that relationship answers for their actions or inaction and importantly that there is avenues for redress when commitments and duties are not realised. The key to this is that whilst officials are “accountees” the public is expected to play the role of “accounters” but that public role is dependent upon free flow of information that must be released by the same accountees. It is within the context of these principles that we need to reflect on recent developments in our public services and the extent to which the relational patterns have played themselves out with respect to the practice of transparency and accountability by government.┬á┬á
Firstly, there has been a consistent trend of Botswana emerging as one of the top countries on matters of low incidents of corruption, acceptable levels of transparency by public institutions, adherence to generally both democratic practices and good governance. These reports have presented the country as one of those better governed and well placed to provide an environment where citizens and entrepreneurs can confidently invest their capital and not be afraid of unnecessary government red tape and nationalization of private resources.
Secondly though, the last few years have also seen an increase of events, incidents that put to question the credibility of government, through its various public institutions, on matters of transparency, openness and accountability to the public. These incidents have had a lot of controversies and some of them have ended in courts of laws while some are never satisfactorily dealt with because key witnesses or evidence seem to disappear from official offices or in some cases key witnesses are reportedly eliminated through deportation or death.
These two developments looks to be very disturbing if you want to locate the country’s degree of adherence to democratic and good governance practices. I need not mention specific cases as they are in the public domain suffice to say that if we look at the sagas around the Botswana Meat Commission, Botswana Development Corporation, National Development Bank and others in the not so distant past including the deportation of Intelligent and security agent and now the emerging reports around the intricacies of the raiding of the Gazette office by security agents and a few cases still to be before courts of law, there seem to be a disjuncture.
A disjuncture exists between what security agents know and what they have made known to the public and the subsequent interpretations by citizens in their forms as individuals, media groups and others. It is this disjuncture that has for some time created a wedge between public institutions and the public to the extent that questions are been asked as to whether certain data about incidents that originally appear to be common occurrences are actually so or state managed to conceal certain malfeasance by public officials.
There has been a series of cases that are been investigated by respective public security organs and in the process, as a result of delays & seemingly “tampering” with evidence, the public begin to question the integrity of the state in ensuring that culprits are brought before the law to answer for their actions. A lot of these are supposedly mere perceptions that are said to be based on ignorance of the law or mandates or security organs as well as sometimes sheer misinterpretation of facts by those who wish to gain some mileage of some sort.
In the whole its mostly the result of that grey area of opacity, where a lot seems to have been concealed from the public eye, whether legally, rightly or necessarily is irrelevant because when such is the case media people and the general public are left to rely on speculating on what are the issues. This speculation and the degree to which a lot of issues become contested debates among citizens, requires that the whole strategy of managing government transparency and accountability practices be carefully managed to enlist and secure public trust.
In the absence of public trust of public institutions and how they actualize their mandates, we will continue to have a disjuncture between the reported good governance performances by the country as assessed by major international groupings and the level of speculation by citizens on issues that continue to emerge as of key public interest with a key bearing on how we give meaning to our practices about transparency and accountability by government. It is about managing opacity, meeting set standards, allowing investigations to determine levels of accountability, been answerable to officials’ actions and inaction and imposing appropriate sanctions when necessary.┬á┬á
*Molaodi teaches Public Administration at the University of Botswana 
