It is very important for the new UDC government to work hard at creating a totally new crop of citizen entrepreneurs.
The previous government have tried and failed. But there is no excuse for a UDC government not to try it. UDC government should strive to become a model of citizen economic empowerment.
Creating a new crop of citizen entrepreneurs will only be possible if government acts deliberately to achieve it.
This is not going to happen as an accident. It is not going to happen on its own.
Only policies aimed at it will achieve it. Botswana faces an economic drift.
It is in times like these that the country could be looking up to its sons and daughters to save the country. Yet that is not possible.
As a result we have to count on people who made money from here but who have divided loyalties towards the country.
Many of these people made their money on the back of friendly concessions from Botswana government.
Now the same Botswana government must come up with similar measures to create indigenous industrialists.
Whenever they travel outside the president and members of his cabinet should always take with them citizen businessmen.
We use the work citizen not in reference to people carrying Omang with them.
We are aware that nowadays almost everyone has an Omang.
It could be argued convincingly that everybody who has Omang is a Motswana.
We have no problem with that.
In fact it would be a welcome thing of such people were in real life loyal to this country.
Yet that is not always the case.
By citizen we are referring to indigenous Batswana.
Former president Mokgweetsi Masisi had ascended promising to empower indigenous citizens.
He then was talked out of it by his Asian business partners.
Instead he brought a watered down Inclusion Law that had no hope of achieving what he had promised.
We are of the view that the current government can seize on that opportunity.
Instead of promoting the already empowered, a UDC government should with no shame focus on those that have over the years been excluded from the economy of their country.
The economy of Botswana is not in the hands of Batswana.
It is in the hands of foreigners. This is a real risk going forward.
Some of these foreigners have Omang. But they have alternative places they call home.
If things get bad here they can very easily relocate.
It is exactly because of that reason that these people are almost on a daily basis taking their money out of Botswana.
True Batswana are people who have nowhere else to relocate outside of Botswana.
And the government should concentrate on empowering these people first.
