The Sanballats and Tobiahs of economic rebuilding
Mbongeni Mguni | Tuesday December 9, 2025 08:19
President Duma Boko and Vice President Ndaba Gaolathe, have tended to employ or invoke Biblical verses and imagery in describing the challenges facing the country’s economy, and in their rally calls for recovery.
In keeping with that approach, here is a lesser known Biblical story, the one of Nehemiah and his nemeses, Sanballat and Tobiah.
There are several similarities between Gaolathe, and the Biblical Nehemiah. Both were charged with the monumental task of rebuilding the razed remnants of once grand architecture. Both had the conviction and capability for the task, as well as the vigour needed for the staying power.
They equally enjoyed a ‘royal commission’ or instructions from the top on the rebuilding effort that was to be undertaken.
And unfortunately, both found and find themselves up against conspiratorial enemies hell bent on delaying, discouraging and ultimately destroying the fledgling rebuilding efforts.
Nehemiah’s nemeses are clearly identified. Sanballat and Tobiah, as well as Geshem heard that Nehemiah had arrived to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem after the Babylonian destruction nearly a 150 years earlier. The trio, led primarily by Sanballat and Tobiah, unleashed a variety of psychological weapons from taunting to intimidation, before resorting to physical threats.
At some point, Nehemiah and those helping him in the rebuilding, had to work with a trowel in one hand a sword in the other.
Gaolathe’s nemeses may not be as neatly defined and identified as Sanballat, Tobiah and Geshem, but they are no less formidable.
Attitude adjustment
A notable “enemy” of the economic rebuilding is attitudes, both within government and outside. Between the sluggish adjustment to the urgency of transformation within the civil service, to a private sector still mentally dependent on the public purse, the paradigm shift that has to support economic rebuilding still lags behind.
The untransformed mindsets can be seen in a complaint shared by a former permanent secretary on social media this week. The official complained about a situation where he went to a land board with his valid Omang and marriage certificate as well as certified copies of both, but was still told to go to the police and get an affidavit certifying his name, date of birth, marital status and name of his wife.
“Please help me make sense of all this. “Maybe I should go back to the civil service and clean up this nonsense, excuse my French but it is nonsense period,” the official wrote.
While the urgency of a paradigm shift within the civil service may be papered over by the fact that civil servants continue to timeously receive their dues, the private sector is intimately feeling the economic crisis through delayed settlement of invoices and cutbacks in procurement.
Buca Matenge, a seasoned entrepreneur with 25 years’ experience in the SME sector, recently touched on the sensitive topic of over-dependence on government and the painful birth pangs of transformation.
“Who hasn't been relying on government,” he said at a recent Bank Gaborone roundtable. “From the private sector, we all have been relying on government, we all have been relying on diamonds. “So it should not come as a surprise that SMEs have. “We should have been, as a culture, seeing what's going to come, and practically started changing to what was ahead. “And this is where we are now.”
The importance and urgency of attitudinal adjustments is underlined by the fact that the civil service and the private sector are ultimately tasked with bearing the moving parts of both the NDP and the BETP.
Unhelpful helpers
In the midst of Nehemiah’s war to rebuild, an “ally” appeared. According to the record, a prophet named Shemaiah approached Nehemiah and advised him to shelter in the temple, but the rebuilder saw through the ruse.
“I perceived that God had not sent him, but that he pronounced this prophecy against me for Tobiah and Sanballat had hired him. “Therefore was he hired that I should be afraid and sin and that they might have matter for an evil report that they might reproach me,” Nehemiah wrote.
Gaolathe as well has similar wolves in sheep clothes, namely the ubiquitous middlemen who have emerged over the years that the tenderpreneurs economy has gained strength in the country. Many of these middlemen presented themselves as facilitators in government procurement, people who could alleviate the burden of getting goods and services to the different ministries, departments and local authorities.
For government, the middlemen also appeared to achieve the citizen empowerment objective, so that citizens could be involved in the supply chain of goods and services to the biggest buyer in the land – government.
In reality, as has been increasingly revealed, many of the middlemen have simply worked to over-inflate what government pays for goods and services, without adding any value and minimally employing citizens. In fact, many employees at these entities complain about poor working conditions and under-payment!
The tenderpreneur economy around middlemen has become riddled with political interference, corruption and cartelisation of procurement, leading to extensive litigation and poor delivery of goods and services to the various arms of government.
“These middlemen add no value to the end product received simply adding mark-up after mark-up leading to the unjustifiable depletion of government monies,” said Boko when declaring a public health emergency in August. “You will decide for yourselves whether these middlemen have contributed to the employment of Botswana. “I posit that they have not by looking at the staggering figures of unemployment.”
Fuzzy procurement
Continuing with the theme of government’s buying power, Sanballats and Tobiahs are likely slavering over the apparent discordance reigning in the country’s public procurement sector. The task of economic rebuilding and the massive spending proposed by both the NDP and the BETP, will involve procurement at an order previously unseen in the economy, in pursuit of transformation.
However, there appears to be misalignment either in policy or spirit between entities such as the new Public Procurement Regulatory Authority and the Office of the President, with the latter evidently preferring to use direct procurement, a method frowned upon by the procurement body.
Already, questions have been asked about how several major tenders were awarded, including the Bonno Housing Kgale Project, an Education Ministry initiative involving hundreds of millions of Pula and even the consultants engaged for the ongoing forensic audit of public finances.
Related to this procurement “Sanballat” is the high number of partners emerging to help the country in its distress.
It is known that thanks to her still stellar sovereign credit ratings and international good standing, Botswana has long attracted all manner of unsolicited offers for funding, partnerships, investments and others. In fact, in 2021, the Finance Ministry reported receiving worth a total of US$40 billion in unsolicited bids, with some of the potential funders disguising their offers as grants that would however later morph into loans while others demanded impossible guarantees such as a portion of the country’s diamond revenues.
Others are more shrewd and do not overtly ask for a financial reward or conditions. Rather they seek to simply sign an innocuous looking MoU with the country, then ride on the country’s global brand equity and standing to access opportunities elsewhere in the world.
Calls have grown for a clearer procurement policy and greater legislative oversight on the various deals being negotiated with investment partners. For his part, Boko has said extensive due diligence is conducted on each offer.
“All the investors coming through, we do due diligence,” he told Parliament recently. “Sometimes, we call in the DIS, to say assess them to see if they are legit. “They come with the information and they will deal with their sources including the MI6, CIA, whoever they want to talk to and they will bring a full dossier on the investor. “They then say this is what we have found; they are not making the decision for us, but just giving us information that enables us to process this.”
The President is also on record as expressing his misgivings with the existing procurement methods.
“Tenders are weaved, and trust me, I have seen it myself. If a tender is advertised, people are already in place and have won it beforehand. “There is nothing public about tenders, it is thievery disguised as lawful. “I am not a fool; I have dealt with these tender issues in court. “If someone wants to play with tenders in front of me, I close my eyes and become even angrier,” he said at a kgotla meeting in Tlokweng in May.
For his part, Gaolathe has said direct appointment is the least preferred method in public procurement, as it stifles competition, “which is a basic principle of public procurement”. In a previous parliamentary session, the Vice President said in line with existing regulations, direct appointment should only be used under exceptional circumstances where there is no room for competition due to limited potential contractors or where circumstances do not allow for open bidding.
Artful dodgers
Even between building with a trowel in one hand and a sword in the other, Nehemiah and those with him did not have to deal with a distinctly modern, but equally cankerous Sanballat called tax dodgers.
While more recent estimates are unavailable, a 2021-2022 tax gap study by the BURS showed that up to 60% of those who should be contributing tax, were not. The BURS indicated that the tax losses could measure up to five percent of the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP), an economic injustice that for 2021 was equal to about P10 billion.
At a time when the public purse is battling to recover, the fact that there are some taxpayers in the economy who are fighting to not contribute, can only be described as fury-inspiring, the sort of behaviour that kept Nehemiah awake at night.
To its credit, the BURS is pulling out all the stops to plug the leakages, including the roll-out of electronic VAT billing as well as a track and trace system for products such as alcohol.
BURS officials say they have also doubled down on their ‘boots on the ground’ operations across various regions, pushed for timely filing, as well as followed up on outstanding PAYE and VAT returns, while also conducting targeted revenue-generating audits.
The authority has also squeezed its customs collections through targeted post-clearance audits, recoveries from outstanding deferred accounts debts, continued combating undervaluation and mounted anti-smuggling roadblocks and other initiatives.
There are concerns however that these particular types of Sanballats may find other ways to escape the taxman’s net.
While the majority of tax dodgers involve small businesses who are generally unaware of their obligations or fly below the BURS’ radar, tax experts have singled out some Asian retailers and the import vehicle industry as being amongst the major sources of untapped tax revenue.
The situation can also be inferred from the increasing use of cash in the economy, as those involved find gaps in the system to circumvent their tax obligations.
In October 2023, the Financial Intelligence Agency shared data showing that regulatory cash transaction reports, or those involving amounts of P10,000 and above, jumped to P61.7 billion in 2022–2023, from P25.5 billion in the prior year. By way of context, the cash transaction reports were measured at just P7.9 billion seven years ago.
Cash is the preferred payment method for illicit financial activities, which include money laundering and tax evasion, as it bypasses checks and balances at institutions such as banks and is more difficult to trace for authorities.
Enduring hope
Gaolathe, in his struggles to lead the country’s economic rebuilding, will take heart in Nehemiah’s words against the Sanballats and Tobiahs of his time. The rebuilder did not spend too much time fretting over his nemeses and in fact his book in the Bible only mentions them for just three of the total 13 chapters.
The bulk of his tale is rather about accepting the royal commission for the work, identifying and rallying troops, settling internal grievances and getting on with the work. At last when the wall was finished, Nehemiah was able to say:
“And it came to pass that when all our enemies heard and all the heathen that were about us saw these things, they were much cast down in their own eyes for they perceived that this work was wrought of our God”.
Gaolathe will be hoping that he too, can reach a stage where he can quote the Biblical rebuilder.