With so much attention fixated on the unfolding shambles that is the preparations for the country’s 50 years of independence celebrations, it is perhaps fitting that an aside to that cesspool we also look at what has over the years been a standing feature of the annual celebrations ÔÇô the national awards.
There is a need to reform the manner in which people so recognized in all the categories are chosen.
Such reform would introduce fairness, inspire confidence, and above all raise the credibility and bring back the integrity of these awards.
There is always a risk of over generalization.
But still there is a near consensus that national awards have become a circus. Without taking away the ever present excitement and a sense of fulfillment among the recepients when they get the awards from the Head of State, it is now important to highlight the dark side that now threatens to undo all that the awards were meant to achieve when they were first introduced.
Our national awards have become glaringly unfair, pervasively divisive and increasingly meaningless.
In that score it demeans even some of the more deserving people who are often thrown into the mix with totally the undeserving lot. It is time as a nation we paused to evaluate them.
Such an evaluation would not be a sign of weakness.
In fact to retreat is never a sign of failure.
Rather it is a sign of tactical and indeed strategic grasp. We are not the first to call for such an evaluation.
Yet our Government has resolutely declined to come up with any reforms to the character and texture of its awards, often doled out by the President on the 30th of September, Botswana’s Independence Day.
Last year cabinet awarded President Ian Khama the country’s highest award.
There was not sufficient commentary from the Government on just why the President deserved this award, Naledi Ya Botswana.
This is however not to contest the merits, or lack thereof in the President qualifying for the award, but rather to question the cleanliness of the systems.
What we found disingenuous is the way the award was given out.
A time was chosen when the President would be away and a cabinet meeting, not chaired by him, but nonetheless still with his shadow cast over it since all in it owed their jobs to him, voted to give this award.
This smacks of a sweetheart deal.
The challenge for the next leader or indeed next Government is to come up with a set of totally apolitical criteria in giving out these awards.
If politicians are averse to let go of determining who gets these award, then at the very least the official opposition should be allowed to have an input in the entire process.
It cannot be right that over the years the people recognized to have made a contribution as to be deemed worthy of these awards are those who are close to the ruling party.
The numbers are simply staggering to be a mere coincidence. Disproportionately, those in opposition have been left out, save as tokenism or at the very least to pamper over the clear cases of abuse that are otherwise unmistakable.
The upshot of it has been to make light of the enormous contribution by other Batswana who may not necessarily be part of the ruling clique.
More than that it is madness to suppose that at any rate only those in power or their acolytes would have made a contribution in the advancement of the country at the exclusion of everybody else.
While national awards are as is the case elsewhere intended to unite the nation in celebration of its heroes and luminaries, in our case they serve as a source of deep and acidic polarity for their flagrant favoritism, lack if inclusivity and unapologetically partisan character.
