We want to believe she made the statements in the heat of the moment when cornered by opposition MPs in Parliament. Otherwise, it would be a serious indictment on her judgement if she believes that opponents of the ruling Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) are implicated in falling standards in exams. If she wanted a scapegoat, she should have done better in coming up with one. Her overall response to a question from Botswana Congress Party (BCP) president and Gaborone Central MP, Dumelang Saleshando proved that in blaming opposition politicians, she was involved in a classic case of doublespeak. Saleshando wanted her to admit that given what has been happening at the ministry, she should concede that she is not capable of dealing with problems at the docket. Instead she rumbled on, thereby giving credence to what the MP was alluding to. Venson-Moitoi admits that she found problems at the ministry when she was appointed in 2009. The question she should answer clearly is what she has done to sort out the Augean Stables that we all know the docket to be. Her response was long on causes but very thin on solutions. She could have won many hearts, for example, if she had told MPs that she had tried but in vain to convince government to stop wasting funds on certain security, BDP or presidential expenditure, to fund education projects. The strike she used to link the opposition to the slump in exam results in 2011 was due to her government's mishandling of the situation. She admitted that the government was not prepared for a strike lasting more than 10-days. Yet the government did nothing to make sure that the walkout did not last the three months that it did. Venson-Moitoi must know that whether political leaders held rallies to talk about regime change or not, the strike would still have dragged on for weeks because government was negotiating in bad faith. Government intransigence and perhaps lack of innovation by ministers of education have been largely responsible for the sorry state of affairs in the education sector.
The inadequate facilities and teachers' threat not to invigilate exams that the minister said she found when she was switched to the ministry have absolutely nothing to do with the strike or opposition leaders politicking. When she says that during the strike, nobody remembered that there were children to be taught, what is she talking about? What a loaded statement given that 'nobody' means that even herself, ministry officials, the rest of their colleagues in government, the President and the Cabinet experienced this mass amnesia.
