The long awaited budget speech has come and gone.
And those who had high expectations in it have themselves to blame.
Until the template on which our national budget is produced changes, we must always expect the same boilerplate that we have been producing for almost a decade now.
Forget about the problems surrounding the unconvincing delivery by the minister, even just reading the speech one cannot help but come to a conclusion that the speech is a product of a below average economic undergraduate student.
First and foremost the budget falls short of creating a clear narrative around the more pertinent economic issues that the country faces at the moment ÔÇô the biggest of which is unemployment.
When it comes to employment creation, the budget speech was pale and bland.
Not a single person who is unemployed could reasonably have had the cause to believe that a single line in then speech directly talked to them or their plight.
We have always held the view that unemployment in Botswana was fast morphing and mutating into a security threat.
That conviction has since come to pass.
While the effects of unemployment are there for all to see, it is painful that those drafting such important national documents like budget speech still do not have an appreciation of the emergency and urgency of the situation.
If they did, one would suppose that it was reflected in the speech.
Conservative estimates put unemployment at around 20%.
In other countries that would be a cause for a revolution.
In fact in other countries Government lose power because unemployment is at 9%.
In Botswana, the 20% we are talking about is not only conservative, it is a reckless underestimate.
While unemployment in Botswana cuts across all demographics, it is graduates that seem to be hardest hit.
These are the people on who mind boggling amounts of resources were spent but who find themselves having no role to play in the development of their country.
Our view is that budget speech on Monday had nothing to offer them.
Unless unemployment among university graduate is addressed it will not be long before this country tilts over a cliff.
As it is we have been sitting on the edge for far too long.
We have had all the opportunity to detonate this time bomb.
And we have done nothing to address that.
Either our political leaders have run out of ideas, or they simply do not care.
Either way, this country is headed into a crucible from which we shall never recover.
