Own Correspondent
20th November 2019
The newly appointed Leader of Opposition told Parliament the opposition will be presenting the Freedom of Information Act, which is a critical tool in combating corruption.
“They will also propose changes to the DISS Act to allow for accountability. This will be done within the next 12 months. We have also decided to prioritize 3 of our election pledges over the coming 12 months. These are job creation. A shift to a living wage of P 3,000.00 in the formal sector within 3 financial years as well as increasing the Old Age Pension to P 1,500.00,” said Dumelang Saleshando, who is Deputy President of the Umbrella for Democratic Change(UDC) and also the President of the Botswana Congress Party(BCP) in responding to the state of nation address.
He said, “The starting point with job creation will be to insist on an annual target for the number of jobs to be created. We owe it to our people to make the bold commitments on job creation. We remain convinced that 100,000 in 12 months is possible. If you find this target unattainable, please come forward and state the BDP target. We will support you in the target you set for yourselves, but not having a target is not acceptable and demonstrates lack of commitment to job creation.”
Saleshando maintained that in the UDC held constituencies, the Constituency Development Funds will be strategically used to focus on labour intensive projects.
“There is also a need to have an annual target of repatriating the jobs that Botswana has exported. Our raw materials have been used to create jobs in foreign countries whilst our people remain unemployed. We need to move up the value chain and process our raw materials,” said Saleshando.
He said, “For the first time in the history of our country, key state institutions, namely Directorate of Intelligence and Security Services (DISS), Botswana Unified Revenue Services (BURS) played a key role in influencing the outcome of the 2019 the general elections.”
The Director General of the DISS made public statements about the IEC data base and the 2019 general elections that allegedly demonstrated a desire and plan to interfere with the electoral process.
“The DISS role in the 2019 general elections has put an ugly stain on the credibility of the election outcome. It was inevitable that those who knew that the involvement of the DISS in the election process was likely to compromise their electoral fortunes, will find it difficult to accept the results. I therefore appeal to the nation to be patient with those who may choose to exercise their right to file election petitions. Possible electoral fraud should never be tolerated,” said Saleshando.
He said, “The BURS, on the other hand, was overzealous in frustrating the campaign of the UDC. We are not contesting the mandate of the BURS in collecting taxes from all who have to pay, including those in the opposition and its leadership. Where political leaders fail to comply with the tax laws, BURS have a right to insist on compliance. However, the unending searches that were meted out on the UDC president in the run up to the 2019 general elections, were clearly not about ensuring compliance.”
Statements by the leadership of the BDP suggesting that UDC had secured campaign funding from sources that were positioning themselves to corruptly take over the resources of our republic were misguided said Saleshando.
In the mind of the BDP leadership, only their party has a right to access campaign funding from private entities, domestic and foreign. It is common knowledge that the likes of Debeers have in the past bankrolled the BDP, whilst Chinese businesses now dominate contributions to the BDP.
“This explains why the VIP section at the Presidents inauguration was dominated by foreign nationals. It is not because they love the BDP more than Batswana who voted for it. They sponsored the victory and will be expecting to recover their sponsorship through government tenders,” said Saleshando.
He said, “I know as a matter of fact that all political parties represented in this house, received financial assistance from private businesses, local and foreign. Our political infrastructure should never overly depend on the generosity of corporate interests. Public funding of political parties and regulation of private funding is long overdue.”
Automatic Succession, where one assumes the presidency because they were favoured by the retiring president, comes with dynamites that may cause unexpected earthquakes.
It also encourages a culture of bootlicking by occupants of the Vice Presidency office. Hopefully, this will be addressed during the review of the constitution maintained Saleshando.
The first election under the leadership of President Masisi has brought to the fore the weaknesses of our system and how it can be abused for electoral gains.
“We will be crusaders for inclusive development, human rights, human freedom and social and economic justice. We make these commitments because we believe that human rights and human development are the nonnegotiable ends we are here to promote and serve,” said Saleshando.
He said, “We will speak for poor people, the growing population of unemployed youths, workers whose wages are low and stagnant in an upper middle-income economy, and small businesses who are let down by a grossly underperforming economy, inefficient government and failing regulation. We will speak with one loud voice for people with disability, disadvantaged minorities, women, LGBTs (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender) and the environment.”
According to Saleshando Botswana has run fiscal surpluses and accumulated foreign reserves.
“Our debt to GDP ratio is only 13.2%, a full six percentage points lower than it was in 2012. 21.We have Africa’s best sovereign credit ratings (A- and A2 by Standard and Poors and Moodys respectively). Our macroeconomic fundamentals have, year after year, been subjects of acclaim from Bretton Woods Institutions. This, we all celebrate as a nation,” said Saleshando.
He cautioned, “About 16 out of every 100 citizens live below the poverty line, i.e., on less than P881.60 in 2010 prices. The national poverty headcount ratio, itself too high for an upper middle-income country, hides even more shameful levels of poverty in some parts of Botswana.”
For instance, the poverty headcount rations for some of our regions are as follow; Kweneng West (50.65), Ngamiland West (46.2%), Ngwaketse West (40.3%) and Kgalagadi South (39.5%). Many more Batswana subsist marginally above the poverty line, at risk of falling into poverty. In fact, half of Botswana’s population is either poor or vulnerable to poverty.
An estimated 17.9% of those who want to work and are able to work are officially recorded as unemployed, 33.3% when discouraged job seekers are included. Every year, our institutions of learning throw tens of thousands of young people into the unemployed pool.
About 60% of Botswana’s workers earned less than P2000 per month in 2016. An estimated 30.2% earned less than P1,000 a month. In this upper-middle, 56% of the workers subsist P1,000 below the Living Wage. In fact, 70.8% of our workers earned less than P4,000 per month in 2016, the year on which BDP government had promised prosperity for all!
“We have developed the economy without commensurate development of the people! Even when they find work, our people remain poor. They are the working poor. We are degrading work and assaulting the dignity and worth of workers. This is the reason the UDC proposed rapid transition to a living wage of P3,000 per month. Unless you dismantle the structural rigidities that have seen the stellar growth of the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s deliver so little gain for the majority of our people, you will continue to tell workers that a Living Wage of P3,000 a month will cause the economy to collapse,” said Saleshando.
He said, “Our education is in a crisis. According to the Botswana Examination Council, only 24.56% of BGCSE (Form 5) candidates from government and government-aided schools achieved Grade C or better. Let that sink, 24.56%! The year before, i.e., 2017, the pass rate was 24.05%. The results say our education system is failing more than 75% of its children and we know why. It is a result of, among others, poor working conditions for teachers, inadequate school infrastructure, a permanent state of conflict between teachers and the government, and generally poor leadership and management of education, from headquarters to schools.”
There also are two insidious attacks on fiscal capacity, corruption and wasteful expenditure. Tens of billions of public resources have been lost through poor project design and execution (Morupule B comes to mind) and naked corruption, e.g., BMC and the Palapye Glass project.
Resources that are badly needed to fix infrastructure, education and health, and to invest in the growth and development of small business have been lost needlessly and no one has been held to account. The DISS and DCEC allege that there is 100 billion pula missing from Bank of Botswana and the President does not see the need to address this in his State of the Nation Address.
“Our social capital is eroding and we are becoming an increasingly dysfunctional society. In 2018, our homicide rate (deaths per 100,000 population, was better than that of only 15 of the 146 countries surveyed for the Global Competitiveness Index (GCI). The value and sanctity of life is being lost. Gender Based Violence is on the increase. Women and children bear the brunt of homicides,” complained Saleshando.
