Recently there has been media reports on the current legal battle between retired soldiers who are seeking recompense regarding the way their pensions were disbursed by the employer being government. The legal action is done through a pressure group known as A Re Itshekeng. There are a little over 2 500 litigants who have signed up power of attorney for the lawyers representing them to proceed with the case.
The group is well resourced when taking into account the fact that each one of them has contributed P1 000. It is not only soldiers who are taking part in this exercise, even widows and dependents of some soldiers who are now deceased are participating. They are all expecting the turn of events to favour their course of action.
I must state right at the beginning that all soldiers who retired after 1998 are eligible to be heard in this case as several turn of events happened during this time. In that year, soldiers were recruited vigorously by their commanders to ditch the old government pension scheme known as xxxxx or otherwise commonly referred to as the non-contributory pension scheme. The new contributory pension scheme was made to look very lucrative as some of those who retired a year later were cashing in a little over a million pula each. In that era a million pula could bring heaven on earth.
The scenario here was that the company that came to offer alternative pension to soldiers was actually running away from a weakening pension field in America. It was at this point that a lot of the WWII baby boomers were now retiring in great numbers. They were now sucking the life out of the pension scheme. The alternative plan was to look elsewhere in the African offshores. The generals at BDF were really pushing the envelope for this company and a lot of cohesion was used to arrive at big numbers.
While this happened, the Public Service Act changed and that was so much in line with the way pensions were to be disbursed for civil servants. Initially, soldiers at BDF were treated under their Act which was clear on how to conduct their exit. The BDF Act took into account the fact that soldiers had a very short career and were eligible for retirement at fourty five or after serving for twenty years. The Public Service Act was not favouring soldiers as it set the retirement age at sixty five while soldiers could not go beyond fifty as according to the BDF Act. This greatly disadvantaged soldiers.
The truth is; soldiers should never have been retired using the Public Service Act as it gave them a raw deal on the pension ratio calculation. Soldiers are governed by the BDF Act their entire lives and it is utterly unfair to retire them using an Act which is not theirs. The court must be informed that this was done using cohesion.
It is very difficult to resist cohesion in the military. You either fall in line or get ostracised like it was the case with some people that chose to remain with government. But it is very difficult for anyone to prove cohesion in court and this is going to be an uphill battle for the litigants.
But one feels sorry for the thousands of soldiers, many of whom cannot even afford the P1 000 needed to join up the litigating group. By the way, thousands of soldiers remain with absolutely no monthly pension because of the problems I have highlighted above. They now live as destitute and they have nothing to show for the many years they toiled in protection of this great republic. It all points back to the 2008 world recession that came to wipe off their pensions.
Because it is difficult to prove cohesion in court, the generals who are leading this mob should have opted to negotiate with government. In April 2019, President Masisi extended a laurel of an olive branch to retired soldiers through their BDF Retired Members Association at their AGM in Mahalapye. Their leaders chose the path of litigation in order to fulfil their ulterior political motives and it is this attitude that will collapse the entire case. Government leaders are not too dumb to realise that retired soldiers are scrapping it at the bottom of the barrel. They were ready to reach a negotiated settlement as they understand that cohesion is possible in the military.
While at that, a new organization representing veterans known as Military Veterans of Botswana is now willing to negotiate with government on the grounds that mistakes were done on both sides. It is a shame that the very generals that are leading the chorus superintended this current mess. They failed to lead because the commander in chief should have been alerted to avert the current catastrophe. They created this mess and instead of owning up to their terrible mistakes, they are passing the buck through litigation. One cannot imagine that a former commander is among these generals. Instead his soldiers should be prosecuting him for leading them into this mess.
This issue is not difficult when negotiated. A precedent has been set as serving soldiers have been given back pays known as Ntlole dating back as far back as 1998. Retired soldiers who were serving at the time are equally eligible to skin this animal called Ntlole.
The generals leading this group are querying that they were subjected to the governance of the Public Service Act at the time of their retirement. What they would never want the court to know is that they quietly enjoyed the benefits of the Public Service Act while in service and are now trying to distance themselves from it at the point of exit.
Currently pilots at BDF attract 15% flying allowance and 20% flying instructor’s allowance and they are drawing the two allowances under the BDF Act. Further to this, pilots continue to attract scarce skill allowance under the Public Service Act. This is the hybrid arrangement that the commanders enjoyed while in service and are beginning to question the arrangement now when they have actually benefitted from it. It will be harder convincing any judge but the state still provides a window of opportunity for a negotiated settlement.
