Pragmatic and point-blank economics
Mbongeni Mguni | Friday May 15, 2026 10:29
In 1969, then 30-year-old Festus Mogae found himself as one of the very few black faces around a table dominated by Afrikaner governance veterans as a young Botswana and other regional ‘minnows’ negotiated clauses in the Southern African Customs Union (SACU) agreement.
Having joined government, the year before in 1968, Mogae was one of the rare indigenous professionals in a public service still dominated by the former colonial power. At the time of Independence in 1966, Mogae was one of just 22 university graduates in the country and was quickly snapped up to the Development Planning ministry under then-vice president, the late Ketumile Masire.
Now facing off against tough apartheid officials, Mogae carried on his shoulders the challenge of a young nation still reliant on the United Kingdom for its revenues and planning, as well as the injustice of a SACU agreement heavily skewed towards white Pretoria.
Former Cabinet minister and former boarding school mate, David Magang, writing in his ‘The Magic of Perseverance’, noted some key traits about Mogae’s personality.
“There were times, in fact, when I thought he was unnecessarily argumentative and a kind of a Mr Know-it-all.
“But far from resenting his demeanour, I elected to put up with it as it was common tendency amongst people of his field of learning.
“In any case, Festus and I had learnt to be tolerant of each other since our boarding school days,” Magang wrote.
Those in the know say Mogae, armed with a master’s in development economics from the University of Sussex, on top of a first degree from University College, Oxford, held his ground at the 1969 meetings and boldly told the apartheid representatives that they had no clue about the basics of economics!
From the ground upAs a planning and development economist, Mogae was one of the architects of the National Development Plan-approach to nation-building and one of the leading minds behind the idea that in pursuing development, natural resources should be housed in the State and used for national benefit.
“The vesting of mineral rights in the state is the foundation on which development of minerals has been premised,” Mogae told an audience at the Centre for Global Development in October 2006.
“This has allowed the government to equitably spread services and development across the country.
“I must here point out that this is not an antithesis of free market policies but a recognition of the development imperatives that we face as a small developing nation.”
In that last statement was the dilemma Mogae faced as a classic neoliberal economist. On one hand, his training and natural disposition was towards a small, efficiently run government that enables a dynamic private sector run on free-market principles. On the other, as a development economist and a son of rural soils, he understood that the State would have to take on an outsized role in powering social coverage and private sector development, at least in its early years.
Whilst he was known for sometimes being politically outspoken, on economics, he frequently expressed blunt, frank views that the Afrikaners at the SACU talks first tasted in 1969. As Vice President and Finance minister in 1993, Mogae explained his mindset in a policy he termed ‘Mutual Social Responsibility’.
“I detect a growing tendency amongst people to turn to government too often for solutions to problems, for answers to questions, and for money to finance perceived needs.
“Many of these requests are in the national interest, but others are intended to serve personal ends, often at the expense of national development.
“People in and outside of government must view their conduct in the light of its impact on sustainable national development and the opportunities created for future generations of Batswana,” he said.
His mentor, Sir Ketumile Quett Masire, is widely credited for expanding the social schemes first introduced by founding president, Sir Seretse Khama. Ascending into office in 1998, Mogae was wracked by the dilemma between his natural leanings towards fiscal conservatism and pragmatic expansion.
The extent to which he could sit and muse over this dilemma was helped by the fact that Mogae presided over the Golden Age of revenues and growth in the country. Where Khama pinched pennies to get out from under colonial grants and attitudes, and where Masire tasted the first fruits of the diamond and mineral boom, Mogae between 1998 and 2008 saw the economy blossom.
The Golden EraTaking over the reigns in 1998, Mogae gave a glimpse of the economic policy he intended to follow.
“The pragmatic approach to economic management, the maintenance of an open economy in an open society, with stable and balanced macroeconomic conditions, commitment to increased private sector participation in the economy, sustainable environmental management, population management and regional integration, will be the pillars of economic policy,” he said at his inauguration.
The golden era gave him the latitude to follow this policy.
Thanks to the joys of boom/bust cycles in minerals, between 2000 and 2008, the country’s mines produced more copper than they had produced in any other eight-year period, with a historic peak reached in 2005. Similar trends were seen in nickel production, which reached a historic peak in the same year of 2005, helped by the higher global demand and strong prices.
Rough diamond production, also rose between 2000 and 2008, trending above the historic 30 million carat mark between 2003 and 2008, including the all-time peak of 34.3 million carats in 2006. As a result, government’s finances enjoyed a boom period during Mogae’s presidency, moving from a deficit of P1.4 billion in 1998–1999 to a record surplus of P7.7 billion in 2006–2007.