Critique to Emmanuel Botlhale�s toxic economic analysis
Correspondent | Friday April 24, 2015 15:37
These rather lengthy articles titled “The problematique called youth unemployment” which covered acres and acres of usually rare newspaper space seems to have been motivated by a previous debate on Facebook where I had initially posted a piece critiquing Prof Botlhale’s style of analysis in matters pertaining to economics. I made the Facebook post after listening to a Yarona FM taped interview where to my shock the learned prof supported the not so well thought idea of introducing the Graduate Voluntary Scheme (GVS). In that post I critiqued Prof Botlhale’s rather mainstream economic analysis (which I have for a long time followed through his column, television debates, radio and newspaper clips) which I felt were more often misguided, misinformed and therefore posed a danger of pacifying the public to subscribe to his rather toxic view of Botswana’s economic climate. Nowhere in the post did I ever insult or use any derogatory language as I strongly believe in clean and mature intellectual debates. The Facebook post attracted a lot of comments from equally concerned citizens who shared my views that indeed Prof Botlhale’s analysis of economics seems to be that of a mainstream economic praise poet who is always more than willing to sword dance with the powers that be in implementing pet projects that offers no long term economic solution to the poor people. I must be quite honest that many of the comments on my Facebook thread were hard on Botlhale, but far from what this emotionally fragile academic labels as insulting and derogatory. To me these accusations are nothing but a cheap gimmick by this academic in his desperate attempt to redeem himself and stay intellectually relevant amid a barrage of political scud missiles fired at him.
The truth of the matter is that Prof Botlhale for all these years as an analyst and a self-styled darling of the mainstream media (both print and electronic) has never been put through a baptism of fire as majority of the populace often have that distorted perception that economists profess intellectual hegemony and their economic views are often passively consumed as nothing but absolute economic truths. My innocent critique of Botlhale came as some sort of “culture shock” to him and also caught him off guard because for many years the learned prof has always enjoyed the lime light which disastrously resulted in him been cocooned in an aura of intellectual complacency. It is quite frustratingly disturbing to learn that instead of Emmanuel Botlhale thanking me for liberating him from a dangerous “comfort zone” of intellectual complacency and take a deep introspection of his rather archaic or toxic economic views, the learned prof took offence and in a fit of rage, went on the rampage and made a barrage of accusations to my person and others who view economic issues from different lenses. He then took his delusional ranting from Facebook to the mainstream media (particularly Mmegi and The Botswana Gazette of which I have decided to respond) crying foul that he has been labelled “lelope, sematla, etc. accusations which are totally running at parallel with the truth. For those commentators who called for the recall of his professorship( not meaning it in a literal sense) were fed up with this analyst who instead of coming up with economic prescriptions that would resuscitate the poor from economic intensive units they have been transfixed in, was very busy endorsing prescriptions that will sink them further deep into economic quagmire.
Furthermore Prof Emmanuel Botlhale took serious offence that I unearthed his profile and made it public. (On whether his professorship is on economics or not). One may ask why I searched and unearthed Botlhale’s profile? The answer is very simple. After many years of been cruelly subjected to Prof Botlhale’s huff- puff toxic analysis, which are not only misguided, misinformed and an economic hazard for public consumption, I took responsibility as a concerned citizen who subscribes to the notion of transparency to uncover the mask that has been at the fore front of misinforming and pacifying the nation, while the powers that be indulge in acts of economic rascality. No malice was intended, but to innocently check out who is this self-appointed “expert” who claim to profess absolute economic truths in the public arena? Lo and behold, upon learning that the public became aware that his professorship is on Public Finance not Economics as wrongly perceived, Prof Botlhale did the unthinkable: emotionally wreaked and paranoid that he was on the brink of intellectual embarrassment and his hegemonic grip on economic analysis under threat (from whom I do not know) Emmanuel Botlhale then displayed a sense of academic self-importance and showed a vulgar display of intellectual arrogance. He started demonising and satanising me and one Kago Mokotedi (for his piece at Mmegi and The Botswana Gazette) and dismissed us as nothing but a bunch of political messengers of doom worthy of being tried under Cyber Crime laws and subsequently to be condemned to a time in prison! Very sad indeed! It is also shockingly disastrous and utterly hypocritical for Prof Botlhale to misinform the nation that he has always tried in vain to correct media houses that he is not a professor of Economics but of Public Finance. The naked truth is that for all these years (before his true profile was unearthed) Emmanuel Botlhale has gleefully and with a proud salute reminiscent of a Nazi military commander, accepted the title of Professor of Economics bestowed upon him by mainstream media houses that he so dearly hold close to his heart. I found it even quite laughable that he accused my compatriot Kago Mokotedi of insulting him when he stated in his piece that Prof Botlhale’s analysis concerning the Graduate Voluntary Scheme was “reckless and irresponsible”. Since when have these two words deemed insulting? I reiterate Kago Mokotedi’s assertion that indeed Prof Botlhale’s analysis on the Graduate Voluntary Scheme was downright reckless and utterly irresponsible.
In his Mmegi newspaper article Prof Botlhale states that he “welcomes” debates but what I find disturbing is his continued warnings and pathetic instructions on how we should tackle him, even issuing delusional threats that he might take a legal route lest we tore his line of conducting debates! He uses the concept of botho and maitseo not as a guideline on how we should conduct our debates, but as a smokescreen to hide his rough tackles on us by the use of his not so rare skills in intellectual and academic gymnastics. My message to him is clear, that I am not going to compromise an inch on my harsh criticism of his toxic analysis and I am quite clear that in my past interaction with him I have never in any way departed from the nobility of botho and maitseo. Therefore his “directives” are nothing but selfish authoritarian double speak or shameless acts of intellectual chauvinism.
My brotherly advice to Prof Botlhale is that as a public intellectual who on a timely bases grace the mainstream media to give analysis he should know that he is not immune to criticism. The criticism may at times be very harsh and he should therefore learn to absorb it with an open heart and mind, make a deep self-introspection and use those critical voices as useful steps to expand his intellectual circumference to become a renowned and complete academic. Furthermore he should know that by virtue of his position as a professor, he occupies a unique space in the public arena, therefore his opinions on issues of national concern will be subject to thorough public scrutiny and may at times attract harsh criticism. Therefore as a matter of principle because he is not an ordinary Jack and Jill, he should try his level best to make a radical departure from his norm of making pedestrian economic analysis worthy of a kindergarten debating session and engage the public in more robust intellectual discourse that befits his academic status. By being allergic to criticism, Prof Botlhale now faces a daunting and near impossible task of making the people stay hopelessly docile and subscribe to his neo colonial attitudinal mindset. Totally impossible in this post-modernist era!
Now back to Graduate Voluntary Scheme which seems to have attracted some passionate support from Prof Botlhale that it is going to be “stop gap measure” for graduates to gain experience while waiting for “permanent” jobs. In other words the scheme is supposed to run for a very short time. I have to clearly state that I have reservations on this shallow reason. One may be forced to pose this question to Prof Botlhale: For how long will be this short term project? I do not have to remind Prof Botlhale that when Ipelegeng was introduced in 2008 it was supposed to be a short term project to cushion the ills of economic recession. However even up to today, with recession behind us we still have the Ipelegeng scheme running and with no sign of paving way for a better employment scheme. So Botlhale needs to be reminded that the GVS might follow the same path taken by the Ipelegeng Scheme and I wonder how Prof Botlhale will feel like when he meets some of his former students toiling under such kind of servitude for many years with no sign of permanent employment.
Although proponents of GVS ( with Prof Botlhale at the helm) are dreamingly optimistic that it will reach unqualified success, its political dimensions have been largely ignored and down played by the likes of Botlhale and his clueless cheerleaders. As Chenden rightly puts it, there is always unashamed use of such voluntary schemes for electoral purposes, the spread of patron clientalism, and the growing dependence of the unemployed poor on the income transfers that come with these schemes rather productive full time employment. Furthermore I am quite skeptical of the scheme as I feel it might end up being viewed as mainstream social policy than a temporary measure, a perspective that Razak Oduro warns that it could undermine longer term investments in key areas that might provide long term productive employment.
Another less tangible aspect of increasing reliance on conditional cash transfer-like schemes such as GVS as a cornerstone of social policy is that it could induce changes in the mindset of Botswana’s policy makers, as schemes such as GVS have their place because they are wrongly thought to be highly effective, low cost instruments of addressing high unemployment, as well as being politically attractive. The risk however ( which Prof Botlhale is oblivious to) is that due to their ill perceived high political turn off, will come to be viewed as mainstream long term policy occupying centre ( like I have previously mentioned), rather than providing temporary relief, as they were originally conceived.
Finally policy makers and sober minded academics ( which I wrongly thought Prof Botlhale was one) should have long realised that in order to address policy contradictions, the short term poverty and unemployment relief goals of conditional cash transfer style policies ( GVS) should instead be integrated with social and economic investment plans to maximise their development impact, as observed more generally, the longer term success of these programs in fighting poverty and unemployment ( idleness) depends on what Briere and Rawlings (2006) calls insertion into a wider economy, notably through rural employment and labour market policies. Prof Botlhale should know that social protection can only be “transformative” if used not just as an exploitative hand out masquerading as a “stop- gap measure”, but also as tool for strengthening livelihoods through creation of long term employment. Last but not least, in order to help Prof Botlhale cease from adopting and blindly supporting Mabijo-style approaches to economic problems like high unemployment he should take time to go through David Rocherfort’s thesis of “Politics of policy definition” where Rocherfort posits that at the nexus of politics and policy development lies persistent conflict over where problems comes from, what they signify, and based on the answers to those questions, what kinds of workable and long lasting solutions to be sought.
Policy researchers call this “problem definition”. This explains how and why social issues come to be defined in different ways, how these definitions are expressed in world politics, and what consequences these definitions have for a positive thinking government action and agenda setting dynamic.
It will be after fighting the text of this thesis that Prof Botlhale will be able to apply some political sophistication to his somewhat toxic economic analysis and become more academically relevant.
Good luck prof.
*Solly Rakgomo( University of Botswana).