Making a general point that a national vision should “jump” out of a national development plan document, the Bonnington South Gaborone MP, Ndaba Gaolathe, has expressed grave concern that the National Development Plan 11 does not make explicit reference to Vision 2036.
“A vision must possess the ability to emerge constantly before our eyes and within our hearts, inspiring and reminding us what our dreams and our aspirations are. The NDP misses the opportunity to unlid the vaults that contain this vision. Its silence on the vision is loud,” the MP toldSunday Standard in an elaboration of what he had earlier said in parliament when it debated the approval of the NDP 11 motion.
Naturally, the Minister of Finance and Economic Development, Kenneth Matambo, is contesting this view and in parliament, interjected during Gaolathe’s turn on the floor to say that NDP 11 is fully aligned with Vision 2036. Gaolathe’s response was that he had read both documents very closely and found such link missing.
“In the Vision 2036, the overall vision is Botswana to achieve a high-income status – very clearly as a vision. What I am saying is that, that is not coming out in the National Development Plan. What I am saying is that, it needs to be coming out at every corner that this is the vision, this is where we need to go,” the MP said in response.
To Sunday Standard, Gaolathe has expressed concern about a “worrisome disconnect” between the country’s vision and development planning initiative.
“The language is different and there is no obvious weave permeating across government’s posture on the question of development. This reveals a deeper reality about the current government system: a lack of clarity about the development agenda, a lack of focus in strategy, a lack of seamless coordination and a lack of alignment in what the various institutions of government are seeking to achieve. We also have a system that seeks to do everything and ends up achieving nothing,” he said.
In another context, Gaolathe the lack of focus to that of lack of a solid performance management and monitoring regime, which conditions bode ill for the successful implementation of the plan. He says that this lack of focus is so manifest that even the sectors that have been identified as engines for future economic growth receive no more than passing mention in NDP 11.
“Little effort goes towards fleshing out how the system intends to develop these sectors, or how to bring the best out of them. Neither does NDP 11 set any targets for jobs, targets for revenues or targets for investments. This points to major lapses in the system’s visioneering and planning process,” he says.
In parliament, the MP said that the plan should articulate specific quantifiable outcomes: “We want to be able to say we need to have cut unemployment from 22 per cent by half to 11 per cent. We want to be able to say we want to have created so many engineers. We need to create targets for ourselves as a country so that after five years, we are able to account for our achievement and failures and be able to say that we have achieved this or not. My general frame is that we need a vision which we have but we need sectors that are focused. We need to be able to focus on specific sectors and invest energies and resources of the entire country to be able to achieve this.”
But what could have gone wrong? Where does the problem lie? Should Botswana, which has spent billions of pula educating its citizens, still be having problems with crafting its national development plans? Gaolathe’s diagnosis of the problem is that the country has degenerated into a non-meritocratic presidential autocracy that has not only shorn the other two arms of government of all power but has also “sidelined” technocrats.
“The current executive government’s attitude to governance is far from adequate for the purpose of driving any serious development agenda. The government is unduly centralised in the Office President, which office has undermined the judiciary with the recent purging of competent judges. Parliament staff reports to the executive branch of government. Botswana’s parliament remains one of the few without a proper Economics/Budget office and therefore cannot carry out its own economic/sector impact studies or make its own economic projections,” says Gaolathe adding that key appointments to parastatals, government (and sometimes even in private sector companies) are based on patronage and loyalty to the ruling elite. “This means that already the foundations of the system’s institutions are under siege and many lapses exist in them. We need a new governance attitude, to guarantee the fairness of the courts, enhance the capacity of parliament to hold government to account and force it to deliver competently. The sidelining of the most talented professionals compromises the entire system’s ability to inspire a culture of excellence.”
At literally the darkest hour a few short years ago, the loadshedding schedule was one of the best kept secrets because power would just go off without any warning. That is not Gaolathe’s characterization of the matter but he feels that the government should educate Batswana more about Vision 2036 (which succeeds Vision 2016) and has gone into implementation phase.
“In some ways, it is fair to say that this vision remains hidden, at least so far, for even those who are in the lead of government rarely express it. Many people still do not know that the vision that has been captured is that of a desire to become a high-income country by 2036. It is an inspiring vision alright – no qualms about that, but human beings are rarely inspired by what they do not know,” he told Sunday Standard.
