THE PRESIDENT’S WISHES, DESIRES AND PLANS; NO PROGRAMME OF ACTION, NO DELIVERABLES THE BNF’S RESPONSE TO THE STATE OF THE NATION ADDRESS of 4 NOVEMBER 2013. I welcome you all to this press conference. We are always happy to engage with the press on matters of national interest and trust that you will play your part in rescuing and reviving our democracy. Whoever wrote the speech that is the State of the Nation Address, for the President, seems to have a fascination with ambiguity and a preoccupation with abstractions. The State of the Nation Address is generously littered with these. The Address makes some very bold and bald assertions which are either not backed by any facts and evidence or are clearly belied by facts and reality. The Address makes the claim, at Paragraph 4, that “our democracy has never been stronger or more vibrant.” It is in relation to this spurious claim that the President expresses his elation. What does the evidence show? It shows a regime that has tightened its grip on Btv, RB 1 and 2, Daily News and all other Government media and made sure that these carry only praises and adulations of the President and his Government. It shows a regime that is alive to the study conducted a few years ago by the Democracy Research Project before it died, that over 60% of our people receive their news and information from the State owned media. The evidence shows a regime that does not want to allow these State owned media to report truthfully and fairly on the activities of the opposition. In fact, the evidence shows a regime that has imposed a near total blackout on anything positive about the opposition. The President’s much vaunted platforms for democratic participation: his Kgotla meetings and wasteful walkabouts are merely a charade; a democratic hoax designed to mollify disenchantment by giving a false impression that the people are being listened to and taken seriously. The body of evidence indicates a regime that has destroyed and completely weakened all oversight institutions from our constitutional landscape. The office of the Ombudsman which, despite its limited reach and thrust, used to do its bit in holding Government departments to account on behalf of the ordinary citizen has been marginalized and deliberately emasculated. This has been done through questionable appointments and the obvious cadre deployment of this regime. The present Ombudsman had done a sterling job of keeping the public sector Unions at bay and has now been rewarded with the assignment to destroy the office of the Ombudsman. The Directorate on Corruption and Economic Crime, lauded at Paragraph 77 of the Address with achieving a 75% conviction rate, has become completely worthless. In fact the DCEC has gone beyond being worthless and become complicit in the concealment of corruption especially if it is carried out by the higher-ups in Kgama’s regime and circle of cronies. The President’s claim of a 75% conviction rate is not only false, it is also misleading. What we have seen from the DCEC are choreographed cases resulting in the acquittal and sanitization of Kgama’s Ministers and friends who were brought before the Courts. What are the cases that mark and measure this stunning success of DCEC? And how many have these cases been and over what period of time? The reality is that no corruption cases are currently being tried by the Courts. Despite the establishment of a dedicated Corruption Court, no cases are being prosecuted. Excuses ranging from the lack of capacity at the office of the Directorate of Public Prosecutions to claims that there needs to be some legislative amendments to enable the Corruption Court to operate have been presented. Of course the Address could not even mention these recalcitrant realities as they would only serve to bust the Kgama bubble of redolent self congratulation. These realities tell us that the main institutions for safeguarding the citizen against the excesses and abuses of Government are weak and irrelevant. They have been deliberately rendered weak and irrelevant because it serves this Government. If they were robust and well capacitated 75% of our cabinet would be behind bars. In fact if these were serious about addressing corruption and administrative abuse the President himself would be facing impeachment for his Mosugate scandal. We see corruption paraded most arrogantly by this regime at the same time that we are assured that the regime is committed to zero tolerance. The President’s private dwellings are being constructed with public funds and he is being treated to his own private airstrip in circumstances which his own paid agent and spin doctor has miserably failed to sanitize. This pathetic spin doctor, who deserves only to be deported from this country and sent back whence he came, has now become the white face of a dark and sinister regime. He tries to explain away corruption and incompetence in a manner that leaves him looking ever so foolish and ridiculous. Only a paid foreign agent would engage in the kind of work that Jeff Ramsey does. His dishonesty is an insult to the indigenous Motswana and shows him to be possessed of a “conscience” so elastic that he cannot be separated from the common criminal. The President’s address is littered and peppered with ineffectual wishes and slogans. He talks of “strategic projects to drive the diversification of our economy to become among others a transport, energy and communications hub as well as a global centre for mineral beneficiation, tourism and innovation.” What are these “strategic projects”? Of course he is ashamed to mention them directly if any there are. One only gets a sense of what the President means in relation to tourism when one looks at Paragraph 44 of the Address. Here he tells us that the participation of Batswana in tourism involves what are clearly very small-scale operations which he claims are reserved for them. He lists mobile operators, guest houses, mekoro and camps and caravan sites. This is the miserable slice allegedly reserved for citizens. The main gig is reserved as well but not for Batswana. The more serious tourist activities are the exclusive preserve of the foreigners. That there is a serious need for the indigenization of the tourist industry in order to empower local communities is a language that Jeff Ramsey does not speak and, therefore, cannot write in the President’s speech. The language of indigenization would stab Jeff Ramsey and the President in the heart. It would place Batswana at the center of meaningful economic activity and liberate them from poverty and its attendant traits of sycophancy and boot licking. What is striking about this State of the Nation Address is its overdose of wishes, desires and plans. We are reminded of the 5Ds and told that they are about certain “flagship programmes for sustainable economic diversification.” We are not told what these programmes are. And there is a reason for this. There simply are no such programmes. Ipelegeng and ISPAAD can never count as programmes for sustainable economic diversification. And of course if we were told what these programmes are we would then evaluate them ourselves objectively and come to the conclusion the Government fears: that all the alleged programmes, if any, are a frail and fitful attempt at short-termism. They are but a wasteful and irresponsible palliative to the serious economic challenges facing our people. The President extols manufacturing, finance, transport, construction and tourism as providing “encouraging evidence of diversification”. What manufacturing industry is there to talk about in Botswana presently? What is the status of the Glass Manufacturing project in Palapye? The nation demands answers to these and other persistent questions Mr. President! What is the scale of loss occasioned by the ineptitude and corruption of your Government in respect of this project? Who has been the major beneficiary of this alleged economic diversification? These questions will haunt this President to his grave if they do not actually take him to it. The President treats us to some other abstractions in relation to economic growth and job creation. He gives us crude percentages. He dishes out statistics culled recklessly in order to mislead. Benjamin Disraeli captured the trickery played with statistics very poignantly when he said, “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics.” And you can also see that in the perking order statistics sits dangerously atop the list. We are not told, as we have come to know from elsewhere that there are well over 240 000 unemployed Batswana. These are human beings, creatures of flesh and of blood; with a life to live. How many of these have been absorbed into meaningful, gainful employment? How many of these are earning a living wage? How many of these have, therefore, been liberated from poverty? These are very important questions for the nation to get answers to. We are now beset by the phenomenon of labour brokers operating in almost all our mining houses. Employees are now at the mercy of the labour brokers. These employees are not unionized and command salaries that mock any legal fictions that rank them as gainfully employed. This is part of an orchestrated effort by this regime to completely weaken and ultimately destroy the trade union movement in this country. But in its war with the trade unions the Government is succeeding only in condemning our people to poverty and exploitation of staggering dimensions. The President announces at Paragraph 18 some of his efforts to reduce unemployment. What are these? These efforts are simply the formulation of a National Employment Policy in collaboration with ILO, for better coordination of existing employment intensive investments. We are not favoured with any enumeration of these employment intensive investments. And the reason for this is simple. There are no such investments and the President was being less than honest with the nation in these regards. The answer to all the problems seems, for this President, to be formulation of policy and yet more policy. It involves the listing of priorities as he does at Paragraph 21, which are unrealizable because there simply is no programme for their realization. There is no action! We are treated to slogans and wishes that are not attended by any programme to translate them into any lived reality for our people. Until this regime is removed from power these priorities will remain ineffectual moral slogans devoid of any meaning for the ordinary and indigenous Motswana. Those of you who have read Chinua Achebe will remember the conduct of the lizard that fell from the highest point of the iroko tree. It remains unclear what happened there. Did the lizard jump or did it just fall? Anyhow, what is not in any doubt is that this feat or accident on the part of the lizard did not attract any praises and adulations. It was because of this and the seeming insignificance of this event that the lizard took the decision to praise himself. And so Chinua Achebe records the experience of this lizard by saying that, “the lizard that jumped from the highest point of the iroko tree said he would praise himself if no one else did.” This seems to be exactly what Kgama is doing. He is the quintessential lizard that fell from the highest point and failed to attract any serious attention and so decided to praise himself. He has elected to call his self praise, The State of the Nation Address. There is no room for innovation and creativity in Botswana’s current set up. This President will never appreciate that today the most economically significant industrial property is not the machine but the design, and not so much the design as the capacity to innovate design in both process and product. The kind of education his Government is administering on the youth of this country is hostile to creativity and innovation. There is very little if any room for the generation and propagation of any transformative ideas and practices in our Government set up. The days of an independent civil service ended with the regime of President Mogae. We are now beset with a highly partisan, highly politicized and highly militarized civil service run on directives and commands issued in total disregard of the plane of reality in which they fall to be implemented. The President is conspicuously silent on the monumental failures of his regime in relation to the cattle industry in this country and the collapse of BMC. He has failed to present any programme of action to address the astronomical losses suffered by cattle farmers in the Communal Grazing Areas and indeed the entire country. He has failed to address the plight of the Zone 6 farmers whose cattle were killed and a miserly payment of P 1700 forced on them. Whole families have been rendered destitute by the single stroke of the President’s plan when he sanctioned the wholesale destruction of the cattle in Zone 6 despite evidence from his own veterinary officers that there was no Foot and Mouth in that zone. The Zone 6 farmers have had to approach the Courts to seek redress when the President praises himself for his responsive consultative fora. In the end, what the President presented to us as his State of the Nation Address was some ill constructed fiction intended to mask and conceal his Government’s insatiable greed. He tried to invoke the Bible and religion. But what it has served to highlight even more is that his Government is like a demon propitiated only by human sacrifice. How can anybody explain his depraved indifference to the plight and suffering of the Basarwa of the CKGR and Ranyane; indeed the plight of the multitudes of oppressed and marginalized communities across the country! When all these tragedies play out and attract international condemnation for our country and its tourist industry, all the President can engage in is an orgy of self congratulation. His is an extremely exorbitant cult of personality. It must be stopped before it engulfs the country in strife and conflict. I must conclude by sounding a word of caution. We are approaching the national elections next year on a date that the President has elected to carry in the dome of his forehead somewhere and has not shared with the nation as well his competitors. It would have been the most remarkable innovation if he had used the occasion of the State of the Nation Address to announce the date of the General Elections. But, as always, nothing good and useful ever comes from this man! We heard the sadistic moans and screams of this Government following the elections in Zimbabwe. They called for an audit of the Zimbabwean elections. We raise the alarm now and warn them timeously. We will not accept any rigging and irregularities in the coming elections. We are aware of the machinations employed throughout the years by the ruling party to rig elections. We are aware that it has now placed DIS operatives across the registration and polling areas to ensure that it engages in massive voter trafficking and vote rigging. We are aware that despite the seemingly low voter registration the BDP is not worried at all because they will, as they have always done, ensure the illicit registration of their members and sympathizers away from the formal registration processes. I would like to solemnly and most sternly warn President Kgama and his DIS that whatever machinations of repression they may fashion and deploy the revolution will hatch underground, beneath plains of concrete where no bird sings. The air out there is thick with the scent of revolution. It is smoldering with anger and resentment for the corruption and the repression of this regime. If we do not receive reassurances of the credibility and fairness of the electoral process in good time we will have no option but to open up new frontiers of struggle. We hope the President heeds these warnings and acts decisively to ensure the integrity of the elections we will be involved in. Duma Boko President, Botswana National Front
Posted on: Wed, 20 Nov 2013 09:03:52 +0000
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