Before dwelling on the subject matter for today, let me take this opportunity to wish Batswana a prosperous and a happy 2014. Indeed, this year offers greater possibilities for many of our citizens as far as improvements in their lives are concerned. In particular, 2014 is an election year where scores of Batswana will go to the polls to elect their representatives at both local and central government levels. The hope is that they will vote for people or parties that they think will best serve their interests. In short, 2014 might usher a new beginning in the way we manage our economy, thereby ending the level of inequality that has come to characterise our existence.
But I would like to begin this discussion with our journey into another African country to set a background to substantive part of this instalment. At the end of last year, we embarked on a festive holiday beyond our borders with couple of friends. A trip that seemed a failure from the onset turned out a great adventure. We headed west to Namibia. The place remains one of the best kept secrets of this continent; beautiful in all description of the word. We were really impressed by the cleanliness and, more than anything else, the bold use of paint on their buildings. Windhoek proved a wonderful place, indeed. We proceeded the following day to Swakopmund. Here we found ourselves in a completely different place. Very little suggested that we were in Africa! The buildings, the people and almost everything pointed towards Europe. And sadly, the place also turned out to be hell.
I have been to a number of places across the globe. Yes, in some places I felt uneasy. A little bit unwelcome. But in general, the treatment that I received was fairly good. Swakopmund, on the other hand, was not in any sense a place to visit again. To cut the long story short, we were treated like second class citizens by our white hosts. I don’t want to use the word, but I felt Namibia would have by now successfully transcended racial tensions following its independence in the early 1990s. I was wrong and, importantly, did resolve never to go there again. We returned home after 3 terrible nights in Swakopmund.
While travelling back I came across an article focusing on the growing gap between the rich and poor globally. To be honest, the global ranking of inequality came as a surprise to me. South Africa topped the list, followed by Namibia. Botswana, surprisingly, turned out number three of unequal societies in the world. For the first two, that is our southern and western neighbours it was understandable why they fared so badly. The historical factors, and in particular, apartheid best offered fertile ground for creation of an uneven societies in South Africa and Namibia. For us, I could not understand ÔÇô or make any sense why we allowed ourselves to be where we find ourselves in that ranking. Put differently, given that we never suffered any form of segregation as experienced by our neighbours, how then did we achieve such horrific levels of inequality? In our case, we had a successful economy for the better part of our post-independence period. Consequently, we were taunted as an exemplary case of effective economic management that other developing countries could learn from. Unfortunately, our success became our own undoing. Rather than crafting a balanced case of development, we have established a highly skewed society in which the wealth of the country is in the hands of the few while majority remain at the other end of the food chain. The majority of Batswana are literally holding loosely on the poverty datum line.
The purpose of this instalment is to make a clarion call on those in charge of our republic to make concerted efforts towards bridging this unsustainable gap between the rich and the poor. I am not suggesting in any way that our political leadership is doing nothing in terms of fighting abject poverty ÔÇô ironically, in this land of plenty. My main concern is that left unchecked, the growing levels of inequality carries far worse consequences for the stability of this country and beyond. This point is succinctly captured by Robert Wade noting that ‘income divergence helps to explain another kind of polarization taking place in the world system, between a zone of peace and a zone of turmoil.’ This result in ‘a large mass of unemployed and angry young people, mostly males, to whom the new information technologies have given the means to threaten the stabilities of the societies they live in and even threaten social stability in countries of the wealthy zone.’ Further, the widening gap of inequality does pose serious danger to democratic capitalism.
While government has declared war on poverty, they should never lose sight of creating an even society, in which the gap between the haves and have not’s is acceptable. But that depends on whether political commitment exists to ensure achievement of that monumental goal. I am afraid, the current crop of our political leaders are short in terms of commitment to doing exactly that.
Take, for example, the current war on the middle class by those in power, in which the focus is on those at the bottom of the food chain and the few at the top, thereby ignoring those in the middle. This is illustrated by lack of salary increments and extension of other benefits for this group over the past couple of years. At the same time, those at the bottom are given unsustainable projects such as backyard gardens with the hope that they will graduate to middle class level. I am not convinced this is how we could close the gap between the rich and the poor. It start by acknowledging, on the part of those in charge of the republic, that inequality is wrong; morally and otherwise.
Hopefully 2014 will be a memorable year as far as reduction of inequality is concerned. Otherwise failure in that front poses serious threats to our economic and democratic credentials.
