A tale of two deserts
Mbongeni Mguni | Monday July 3, 2023 06:00
What does Las Vegas export? Simple question, no?
OK, what does Botswana export? Even simpler right? Here, one can list copper, salt, gold and the world-famous diamonds – the shiny stones first spotted in the Motloutse River in 1959.
Going by that rationale, one would be forgiven for thinking Las Vegas’ prime exports include world-renowned casinos and some of the world’s largest hotels and resorts. Close, but what Las Vegas really exports is the ‘experience,’ the unforgettable, movie-style atmosphere of being in the world-renowned Sin City, the undisputed home of material, hedonistic excess and abandon.
It’s a city sitting in a picturesque valley of the Mojave Desert, surrounded by hills on all sides acting as a natural ‘oasis’ for those escaping the city life, escaping their familiar surroundings to a world of reckless anonymity where they can live out their basest instincts, whether that’s all-night gambling, round-the-clock drinking, or ‘other activities’.
That’s what draws the 30 million-plus tourists who visit sunny Las Vegas each year, ‘the experience,’ one so desired worldwide that queues for the famous Las Vegas sign start forming well before dawn.
That’s the thing also about exports. When the question is asked about Botswana, the mind gravitates to physical commodities like diamonds and soda ash.
For many, when the word ‘exports’ is mentioned, we think of cartons, containers or boxes, wrapped and loaded onto wagons, emblazoned with all manner of waybills, physically going across the border. By this thinking, cattle in a truck passing through the border to Namibia are an export, but the tourist with his fistful of spending cash, coming in at Sir Seretse Khama International Airport is a ‘visitor’.
What Vegas is exporting is as inexhaustible as it is inimitable. From the air, the desertscapes suddenly give way to a high-rise metropolis where architects are clearly competing for the most stunning designs, and from the ground, groups of tourists and locals swarm in the streets, at all hours of the day and night.
The casinos, nightclubs, hotels, resorts and shopping centres are the infrastructure, not the experience. To some extent, in the desert at home, the world-famous Delta, the expanse of wetlands and savannah as well as all manner of wildlife, are the ‘infrastructure’ not the experience.
Here at home, from the air, the cityscapes of Gaborone quickly give way to an expanse of savannah and just after spotting the Makgadikgadi Pans, the green treasure of the Okavango Delta comes into view.
The two deserts share that quality of being an unforgettable experience for visitors, one that people are willing to travel across the world and pay top dollar for, and yet one that ranks back-of-mind when ‘exports’ are considered.
While similar, the two deserts could not be further apart in terms of their value proposition. In Las Vegas, the attraction is joining the masses to explore a sin city adventure, taking pleasure in the relative anonymity provided by the crowds as captured in the ‘what happens in Vegas’ mantra. Back at home, the attraction is the splendid, spellbinding solitude offered by the unspoilt wilderness and breathtaking vistas. Here, the mantra is ‘take only memories, leave only footprints’.
With tourism having been identified as a priority sector for government’s transformation agenda and mentioned specifically in the Reset Agenda, the desert closer to home can stand toe to toe with flashy Las Vegas in terms of the seriousness with which this particular export is treated.
Las Vegas, however, is light years ahead in terms of another transformation agenda priority. Where government is intensifying long-running efforts towards becoming a private sector-led economy, Sin City stands proudly in the Mojave Desert as a monument to the triumph of private enterprise, innovation, and the bull-headed pursuit of profit.
Official history says present-day Las Vegas owes its explosion into a 30-million tourist-a-year location to the construction of Hoover Dam in the 1930s, which brought the thousands of labourers that the casinos, resorts, and bars could then build up around.
Natives in the city however say mafia and crime bosses who fled from tight regulations in the eastern US, saw an oasis of ‘peace’ in the Mojave and set out to establish their quick-money casinos, bars and resorts. Nevada, which is Las Vegas’ home state, was one of the last US states to outlaw gambling in the early 1900s, with the action taken ‘reluctantly’. By 1931, Nevada had lifted the ban and the mafia as well as crime bosses, who had never really even stopped their business, simply ramped up their activities boosted by the labourers from the Hoover Dam’s construction.
The idea of a gambling, drinking and ‘other activity’ oasis far from the federal regulators in Washington DC, proved appealing to both entrepreneurs and customers, particularly as the US was emerging from its Prohibition era, where alcohol production and sales nationwide were illegal.
But for me, regardless of the fact that the capital came from the seedy underbelly of society, being the mafia lords escaping the ‘spoilsports’ in Washington, Las Vegas’ birth and quick popularity is an example of what another American shared with me recently.
“Regulation will always lag behind innovation because regulators are not the ones doing the innovation,” said Chris Maurice, the 26-year-old co-founder of Yellow Card, Africa’s largest crypto exchange.
“It’s part of a regulator’s job to make sure there’s innovation in a country, to make sure that the economy can continue to grow.
“If there’s no innovation in an economy, the economy stagnates and dies.
“Promoting and encouraging that innovation is extremely important and it needs to be considered equally.
“It should not be about protecting people from themselves at the expense of any innovation.”
In Vegas, innovators, entrepreneurs and their capital, whether this was ill-gotten or went towards the promotion of activities society frowned upon, ran far ahead of regulators to establish their own paradise. Government followed with its post offices, police, councils and other services.
This is not to say, Las Vegas is just about the casinos, nightclubs and other Sin City attractions. In fact, the city is also famous for its fashion and jewellery retail stores, architectural designs and arts, but it could be argued that these have come about thanks to the trailblazing efforts of the seedy pioneers and their dirty money that first planted the seeds of success.
At home, the development model has been the traditional one seen across Africa and borne out of necessity. Government took the lead in providing the building blocks of economic success, through primary and secondary infrastructure, and while it is often said that the private sector should take the lead, the latter’s role is more oft than not simply complementary to government, a fact especially reflected in the area of employment. For most governments, allowing the private sector to take the lead in the economy, requires a balance between continuing to provide basic public services to those on the lower end of the income scale, while hoping that the rest of the population is sufficiently empowered to pay its way.
In terms of enterprise development, however, government has committed to being a dynamic and adaptable regulator who supports – not stifles – private enterprise. The wording of a recent policy document, the Transitional National Development Plan (TNDP), seems to point to some discomfort in ceding control to the private sector.
“A (National Development) Plan, by its very nature, is prescriptive, but has to be adaptable,” reads the TNDP, adopted last year.
“To that extent, a plan can include firm commitments by government, and the public sector to implement a range of policies, programmes, and projects, and to provide the funding for doing so.
“A plan cannot prescribe actions for the private sector in the same way as for government, as the former consists of thousands of firms and entrepreneurs making their own business decisions regarding production, investment, markets, employment etc.”
The TNDP adds: “The private sector responds to the environment in which it operates, particularly regarding where profitable opportunities lie.
“These in turn are determined by prices, the exchange rate, taxes, policies, availability of skills and human resources, infrastructure, laws and regulations, amongst others.”
In Vegas, the private sector didn’t wait to be invited to the party. They started the party and then issued invitations to the regulators.
At home, the party is just getting started.