Finding the well of solutions
Lewanika Timothy | Wednesday June 10, 2026 11:34
Since the build up to the 2024 General Election, Botswana’s political landscape has become a contentious marketplace of ideas, criticisms and expectations. Every government decision is debated, policy pronouncements scrutinised.
The debates have now found their way into the heart of government itself, where an interesting question is beginning to emerge: where exactly should the country’s solutions come from?
Addressing council chairpersons and secretaries recently, President Duma Boko appeared impatient with what he sees as a political culture preoccupied with diagnosing problems rather than solving them.
'Any politician who comes to me and tells me there's a problem, I know the problem. I read, you know. I engage with people. “I don't live in heaven and visit here to come and then go back home in heaven. “No, I live on this Earth. I live here. I live this reality. I know it. I'm on intimate terms with it. “So don't teach me what I already know”.”
Boko continued: “Let's engage on solutions, strategies to get us from where we are to where we ought to be. That is your job. That is your responsibility. “If you have any purchase at all on being a leader, that's your job. What is your job? “Not to tell us about problems. No, the job is to solve the problems. Give us a solution. Let us debate solutions.”
The President is essentially arguing that Botswana has become too comfortable in discussing what is wrong and not comfortable enough discussing how to fix it. On one end it is a compelling argument, for instance unemployment is not breaking news. Neither are concerns about economic diversification, public service inefficiencies, skills mismatches or youth frustration.
Botswana has spent years talking about these issues. In fact government reports have talked about them for decades. Political parties have discussed these issues at length and business leaders have spoken themselves hoarse as well.
If national development depended purely on identifying problems, Botswana would probably be a high-income country by now!
Yet the President's remarks have also triggered a fascinating political debate because there is another side to the story.
One can wonder though what the use of National Development Plans and various national strategies is, if the country is still seeking solutions. More worryingly if the country still does not know how to clearly solve its problems, what does that mean for the multitudes of Batswana falling into the abyss of poverty and various economic and social ills?
In democracies, identifying problems is not a matter of nuisance. It is practically a profession for politicians. Entire political careers are built on pointing out what governments are doing wrong.
In fact, modern democracy was designed with the assumption that somebody must constantly be asking uncomfortable questions. The British philosopher Jeremy Bentham once described public scrutiny as a way of keeping power under watch. Later, political theorists would develop the idea further, arguing that governments perform better when they know someone is paying attention.
The result was a creation of the state called Parliament. At its best, Parliament is essentially a national complaint department with constitutional powers. Its purpose is not merely to applaud government plans. It is to ask why hospitals have no medicines, why roads are unfinished, why schools are underperforming and why promises remain unfulfilled.
From that perspective, the politician who keeps talking about problems is not necessarily being negative. Probably the trouble begins when diagnosis becomes an end in itself.
Economists sometimes speak of what they call 'analysis paralysis' a condition where organisations become so consumed with studying problems that they struggle to make decisions. Politics can suffer from a similar disease where a country can spend years discussing unemployment without creating jobs.
In Botswana we have seen conferences on productivity while national productivity declines. Authorities can establish committees to investigate challenges already investigated by previous committees.
Eventually, citizens begin demanding less conversation and more action. This is where Boko's frustration appears to come from. The UDC was elected partly because voters believed it possessed answers that the previous administration lacked. The coalition did not campaign on a promise to discover Botswana's problems. It campaigned on a promise to solve them.
Some critics, particularly within the main opposition Botswana Congress Party, have constantly asked: “If the UDC was elected because it claimed to have solutions, why is it now demanding solutions from others?”
It is not an unreasonable question. After all, governments and oppositions perform different functions. Political parties often change their philosophical position the moment they cross the floor from opposition benches to government offices.
The reality, of course, is that both sides have a point.
A Parliament that only identifies problems eventually becomes repetitive. Citizens already know the roads have potholes. They want to know what happens next.
The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle argued that the purpose of politics is practical action aimed at improving human life. Politics was not supposed to be an academic exercise. It was meant to produce results.