Botswana story is my story
Pamela Dube | Wednesday April 15, 2026 10:48
By the mid-2000s, Botswana was driving towards a high middle-income economy. Our currency, pula (a symbol of who Motswana is - rain and peace), was a show of power of the purse.
Our foreign reserves were something of envy to fellow Africans most of whom were trapped in foreign debt. Global donors competed to 'empower' us. HIV/AIDS was a curse and a blessing to nation Botswana. Our third president, Festus Mogae, told the world that the virus would wipe us out if we did not receive donor funding.
Americans came through, the Europeans opened the purse. We became a story of fear to favour. Hopelessness to hope! We survived. We lived to tell of the good news.
We had a story to share - in health, education, infrastructure and development. Almost everything was free to the citizens. The government gave, the citizenry received. Free education, free health.
Grants and government-assisted loans, FAP, NDB, CEDA funding was where if you had an idea, even without experience, you would go to source funding, in grants and low-interest loans. Farmers, commercial and communal would tap into subsidies.
Then it got real. Slowly, but surely, the weak foundations showed cracks. We were not as stable as the world, the West, wanted us to believe.
Crime, corruption, gender-based violence (GBV), unemployment, dropping education standards, collapsing health facilities, diamonds market depressed (lab grown diamonds is our pain), unstable economy... Ok, we are now part of the confused and depressed world. The 'happy' index says Batswana are now amongst the least happy people in the world. That's painful.
It did not happen overnight. It did not come with the administration of the new ruling party, the Umbrella for Democratic Change and President Duma Boko. No. We long saw it coming. We just did not want to believe it, that the world is collapsing around us, widening the cracks in our systems. We buried our head in the sand. It was long coming, from the last days of the later president Sir Ketumile Masire.
In the early 1990s, the new and vibrant independent newspapers, Mmegi in the forefront, started reporting on major corruption scandals, tarnishing the country’s once clean image and reputation. Senior Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) leaders and government officials were being implicated in land grab and tender fraud.
Amongst the notable scandals, shacking the foundations of our “perfect” image, was the Botswana Housing Corporation (BHC) mismanagement and alleged kickbacks, bleeding the of tens of millions of pula. The mysterious accident claiming the life of senior BHC official is what broke open the secret chambers.
Just a year on, in 1991, the land grab around Mogoditshane, led to the establishment of the Englishman Kgabo Commission, exposing the land board rot that continue to burden us. Cabinet ministers and high ranking officials got caught in the web. The end result was the resignations of the then vice-president, the late Peter Mmusi, and then minister of agriculture, Daniel Kwelagobe. In the same year, the International Project Managers Consultancy scandal, led to another presidential commission, reporting a loss of P27 million to an irregular tender of school supplies.
To shake and entrap Masire was the National Development Bank scandal of 1993, where the parastatal went bankrupt to unpaid loans. Now with the world shift and focus on Botswana, the government admitted to the challenges and established the Directorate on Corruption and Economic Crime, in 1994. Mogae era was not without episodes. While credited for re-directing the country back to trust, and attempts to clean-up, his personal relationship with the late Debswana managing director, Louis Nchindo, described as “cloak and dagger”, made many nervous.
The man known as a kingmaker in the BDP leadership and government, was central to negotiating De Beers restructuring deals, was accused of being involved in shady deals, smelling of money laundering.
Mogae also had deal with uncomfortable questions around his vice president’s family being awarded multi-million-pula government deals, the Seleka Springs Defence Tenders.
It was during Mogae, the economist, era, that Batswana’s pride, the pula, saw rapid devaluation. Observers saw this move as attempt to manage rising government expenditure, overburdened by corruption and mismanagement, eating into the national coffers.
The last two regimes of Ian Khama and Mokgweetsi Masisi, could be said to have quickened the pace of our fall. The mudslide came through wide-spread corruption, nepotism, crime, GBV, repression, silencing free press, the civil society and opposition, amongst other ills. The rogue intelligence service took root - instilling fear and suppression.
Now Batswana know hunger. As Bob Marley, in the song ‘Them Belly Full’, sang “a hungry man is an angry man”, there is growing nervousness as to where the state of affairs is leading us.
Businesses are closing at rapid rate, unemployment at all-time high. The streets, as are the homes, are no longer safe – criminals are running amok. But we refuse to go down silent. We are not defeated. We are fighting back. Violence is not our story. GBV is not us. Corruption, crime and unhappiness are not our nature. We are repositioning. We are re-organising. We are navigating the terrain. We are Re-aligning. Re-connecting. Resilience is African. It is the nature of Motswana.