Botswana: A country on verge of State Capture

Kgosietsile Ngakaagae | Friday August 23, 2019 14:50

Now, not all who voted against the motion were bought by the construction mafia. That would be an unfair statement to make. Some were fooled. They thought that they were rendering their country a service. Some voted purely on the basis of political expediency.

My frustration, this week, is not with the many who must do without water because of this callous act of crime by the construction mafia and a cabal of thieving ministers and legislators.

It is about the sheer audacity of these thugs to consider our Parliament a legitimate target. It is about the capture and the defilement of our national assembly by the thugs and those through whom they have been corruptly enjoying a largesse of corruption at the citizens expense.

I do have sympathy with the view that our Cabinet has always been captured by a coterie of self-serving economic hit-men masquerading as merchants.

There has always been identifiable economic hit-men without whom the Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) would have found it difficult to survive.

They have not done it for country nor have they done it for the love of party. They have done it for self and have overtime, been massively rewarded. 

I do not have to mention the example of the corporate entity that bought a president out of power and had a hand in installing a subsequent one. Well, examples are abundant.

Such a fact is a matter for the public record. As a party, the BDP has thrived in mafia captivity. It has danced to the tune of conceited thugs who but for some good men and women in the party, could have swallowed our economy whole and left us destitute.

With the long term sustainability of the BDP project in question, the continued investment of these hit-men in the party is no longer safe.

That we will once again have a BDP Cabinet in October is, whilst a strong possibility, not guaranteed. Survival dictates that the merchants must change strategy and hedge their bets.

Part of it is to stay in the grey until there is more certainty about the direction in which the political winds are blowing which explains why so many of them are conspicuous by their silence.

A period of political uncertainty is fertile ground for mafia activity and state capture. Foreign billionaires with interests or aspirations in the local economy are dining those in power and those that seek it.

With the opposition well within striking distance of the state house, the end justifies the means. With the BDP mortally wounded, it is access to campaign money and resources that may just decide the contest.

The glue of principle has long lost its adhesiveness and shady merchants have found footing in our politics. Dead comrades have been abandoned and their supposed killers have become friends and heroes.

The lure of power can bring about interesting outcomes. Sorry, I risk digressing.

The mafia are positioning themselves for a possible new dispensation in which they would replace the present state captors. Those at risk of losing their stranglehold on the economy have chosen to go hunting deeper in the woods.

We are at a time when ownership of key individuals across the political divide as opposed to ownership of parties and state institutions may be their option. The capture of Parliament is testament to that desperation exhibited by mainly the Arab and Chines construction mafia.

If the mafia can compromise ruling party and opposition MPs now - which they have to some extent succeeded in doing with the Khato Civils matter- they can control them regardless of who wins in October. What better time to do it than now when they are all so in need of campaign finance.

It is of course the duty of the Directorate of Intelligence and Security (DIS) to frustrate these developments. Mafia organisations must be disturbed and destroyed by intelligence intervention.

Such wars are fought in the dark, away from the citizenry. It is necessary to investigate the recent developments in order to ensure that these thugs are kept away from key institutions of government.

The construction mafia must be kept away from our Parliament. Regrettably, we have had the misfortune that overtime, the DIS itself has been captured by the Middle Eastern mafia.

As such, when the institution created to resist organised crime was deeply and directly involved in organised crime, it was busy harassing citizens and extolling levies from international mafia in exchange for safe territory. 

I do not have to remind you that the DIS were prime poachers whilst pretending to be fighting it. They were even arrested with a consignment, which case was quickly killed.

I have thought, sometimes, that the DIS should be dismantled completely. They have been an utter disgrace. It is still a wonder to me why, at the very least, the token institutions that are supposed to oversee it, have not been disbanded and replaced with stronger institutions.

We are a country in a perpetual state of national insecurity and on the margins of absolute state capture.

The Khato Civils matter is not just the struggle of one company for a chance to compete on equal and fair terms in our national economy. It is a war with economic thuggery and state capture. Batswana, beware.