Magang speaks on fixing the economy
| Thursday February 26, 2015 17:57
Had you guys been writing books, I would have been spared all the strain. As it was, I had to scour every local library and the national archives, every business-related report in the local newspapers, every relevant website. I had to get hold of every business magazine/scholarly articles and order books from amazon.com. And it wasn’t the world I was writing about but my own country!
In the western world, economists don’t simply teach, lecture, advise, or consult. They write books. When I checked out amazon.com, I came across numerous books by the likes of Paul Krugman, Joseph Stiglitz, and Jeffrey Sachs. When I went to Exclusive Books and Books Botswana, I was looking for books by the likes of Professor Happy Siphambe, Dr Joel Sentsho, Dr Happy Fidzani, etc. I didn’t find any.
Be that as it may, I sympathise with you folks. Publishing is not cheap and it is not easy. Publishers will only accept books on which they expect to make a reasonable return. Academics, therefore, face an uphill battle to get their works to be published unless they are brand names. I encountered precisely the same problem with my first book with publishers in South Africa and the UK, who wanted to see what I had written in the past before they gave my book a thought. It explains why I have always called for the University of Botswana to acquire its own printing press, a call I have repeated in my current book. If major South African universities can have their own printing presses, I don’t see any reason why our principal university cannot have its own.
I hope Professor Thabo Fako, the Vice Chancellor of the University of Botswana who is present, is listening. Next time I publish another seminal work God willing, I want it to be printed by the UB Press and not Creda Communications Press across the Limpopo.
Since the publication of my autobiography, The Magic of Perseverance, a number of citizens of high standing kept urging me to write another book but a thematic one this time around. As you all know, I am a modest man and so I was reluctant to pay heed, the reason being that I didn’t want to be misconstrued as passing myself off as the conscience of the nation. It was not until I one day ran into Mr Justice Key Dingake that I had a change of mind.
The learned judge suggested to me that having recorded my highly inspirational life history, it was time now that I set about doing a constructive critique on certain aspects of the contemporary affairs of our nation state. This would not only serve as food for thought for the sitting government but would also be a valuable frame of reference for future generations. Since this was a judge propositioning me, I took that to be an order. Indeed, I didn’t want to defy the judge and at my age end up being locked up for contempt of court!
When I set about writing the book, I intended it to dwell on the politics and economics of our country in one fell swoop. As I scribbled away, it occurred to me that actually each theme needed its own dedicated book.
This was because on economics alone, which I started with, the discourse was so extensive my family advised that I break it into two volumes. A political treatise was therefore deferred to a future date.
I completed the book some time in 2013 and was preparing to send it to the publishers when my family stayed my hand. They suggested that I postpone its publication till after October 2014. Their fear was that if my party, Botswana Democratic Party, happened to have a less than stellar performance in the general elections, knives would be out for me: it would all be attributed to my book, which in all sincerity pulls no punches. I would be hung, drawn, and quartered.
It turned out they were right as rumour has it that the reason we garnered less than 50 percent of the popular vote for the first time in nearly half a century was on account of one particular book whose title I will not mention as you all know about it.
Essentially, Delusions of Grandeur addresses three questions in the main. The first is, what is wrong with the economy of Botswana? The second is, why is that particular aspect about our economy wrong? And the third is, how can the wrongs be righted?
There is certainly a great deal that is askew about our economy and the way it is being managed and I am not the only one who so assert.
In 2013, Beata Kasale, a doyen of the publishing industry, wrote a highly impassioned poem on the subject titled Botswana in Chaos in the November 22 edition of The Voice newspaper.
I happen to have three grandchildren all of whom are under ten years of age. Twenty to thirty years from now, they will probably be faced with an economy even more dire than today’s and they will wonder to themselves what on earth went wrong when their country was once hailed as the African Miracle. This book is an attempt to set down for them exactly what went wrong and to demonstrate to them that as a responsible and patriotic citizen, their grandfather did do his part in pointing out the ills and prescribing remedial measures in the hope that a stitch in time saved nine. This book is dedicated as much to them as it is to their peers.
Meanwhile, I’m not done folks. Volume 2 is in the presses as we speak. It won’t be long before I invite you again to toast to its launch.
The speech was edited.