The African continent is replete with examples of former opposition parties which took over State power seemingly well-meaning in their rhetoric, promising meaningful change, and a better life for all, but upon assuming power forgot about the people as they got preoccupied with enriching themselves and their families.
In her book, It is our turn to eat, Kenyan journalist and best-selling author, Michela Wrong, tells the story of a whistle-blower, John Githongo, who exposed corruption in his country’s new administration led by Mwai Kibaki, who took over from Daniel Arap Toroitich Moi after ruling Kenya for 24 years. Kibaki’s victory in 2002 was heralded as marking the birth of the Second Republic in Kenya and was expected to usher in a new dawn of democracy, transparency, prosperity, and free of corruption. Githongo, who had been appointed by Kibaki to be that country’s corruption czar, something which was well received by Kenyans because of Githongo’s credentials as a man of integrity and principle, was hounded by that country’s security agencies until he skipped the country and went to exile in England.
In the last two weeks since the fall of the Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) government, reports of allegations of corruption have surfaced in various government departments and parastatals. “Whistle-blowers” are suddenly coming out of the woodwork to expose the rot that is taking place in government departments and the respective agencies. While this is a welcome development, some of these allegations should be taken with a pinch of salt because they might be vexatious and malicious, peddled by vindictive malcontents in the system intent on settling old scores. We have always known about grand scale corruption taking place in the government enclave. We know that senior government officials including Permanent Secretaries and Ministers are involved in this corruption. Corruption did not begin with Mokgweetsi Masisi’s administration. It has always been there even during the Sir Seretse Khama administration. However, as the country’s economy grew over the years, opportunities to steal, deceive and extort increased dramatically. Corruption is a cancer that has metastasised over the last 58 years, and as a result, the health of the state is compromised. Following a protracted spirited debate between civil society, opposition parties and the media, on the one side, and government on the other side, in 1994 the late Sir Ketumile Masire, established the Directorate on Corruption and Economic Crime (DCEC) to deal with the problem of corruption. The DCEC was formed in response to several corruption scandals that rocked the country involving senior officials in the then ruling BDP. The scandals had caused public outrage and threatened to harm the country’s reputation as an African model of good governance. Unfortunately, it became apparent that the DCEC did not have teeth. Some even argued that the government was ticking the “good governance” box by creating the agency because the agency was not given full autonomy. Although the Corruption and Economic Crime Act (CECA) that established the DCEC, looked progressive, the powers that be sabotaged the work of the agency through political interference. This was to be expected because the DCEC is under the Office of the President. Especially over the last two regimes of Ian Khama and Mokgweetsi Masisi, the nation watched as heads of the DCEC were changed willy-nilly one after the other in quick succession. If the head of the agency was not pliant they were removed. The latest case in point is that of Tymon Katholo, who was one of the founding officials of the DCEC.
He was hounded out of his office by the rogue Directorate on Intelligence and Security (DIS) and subsequently fired by Masisi after 21 months in office because he dared to investigate senior government officials, including their political principals. The role of the DIS in fuelling corruption in the country is a subject for another day. Suffice it to say that the DIS, since its inception in 2008 when Khama became president, has become the main enforcer of corruption in the country. The current head of the agency, Peter Fana Magosi, is law unto himself. The DIS, which was formed to oversee matters of counterintelligence and internal security of Botswana, has a finger in every pie of law enforcement agencies in the country. The DIS, which administers a ton of cash in the form of slush funds, does not adhere to the Public Finance Management Act (PFMA), which provides guidelines for control and management of public moneys and public supplies. The DIS was audited for the first time in 2018 after 10 years of being in existence. And because there is no accountability, taxpayer’s money continues to be stolen with impunity. The corruption during the last 58 years takes place at different levels. At the lowest level, corruption takes the form of petty bribes for junior officers for procurement of such consumables as stationery and sundries for the respective departments. Former president Khama’s decision allowing civil servants to do business with government compounded the problem. But there is also systemic corruption involving middle and senior managers who have repurposed government procurement structures like Ministerial Tender Committees, and the former PPDAB, now known as Public Procurement Regulatory Authority (PPRA), to serve certain corporate interests, their political principals, and their own personal interest. At that level, Permanent Secretaries, Assistant Ministers and Cabinet ministers use proxies in their ministries to manipulate tenders for projects that fall directly under their departments to give them to their preferred companies.
The BDP, as a party, was involved in this grand scale corruption by way of influencing tender allocations and getting huge kickbacks from companies that won government contracts. Mega government projects were therefore, reserved for the politically connected, both local and foreign. These politically connected people formed part of the patronage networks that the BDP used to reward activists but also leveraged to maintain cohesion in the party. Most of this corruption, especially in the construction, ICT, and pharmaceutical sectors, involves foreign-owned companies, meaning that billions of pula are repatriated out of the country.
The BDP ministers, like politicians elsewhere, were always quick to deny that they interfered with allocation of tenders, claiming that such awards were done by autonomous tender committees, which comprise technocrats who are trained in their various disciplines, and that they had nothing to do with that process. Of course, this is a lie. It is an open secret that Cabinet ministers have proxies on these tender committees who represent their interest, and they share the loot with them after such tenders are dished out. It is no wonder that the call for lifestyle audits fell on deaf ears for all these years. Many civil servants and politicians live beyond their means, but nothing was done to establish the source of their income. The BDP, like governing parties in other southern African states, operated like a criminal syndicate involved in money laundering, extortion, and rent seeking. It is this same vice that resulted in the African National Congress (ANC)’s electoral decline in the last elections held in South Africa in May. The ANC leaders were involved in State capture, which cost that country over P1 trillion. FRELIMO of Mozambique also got into trouble with the electorate last month because of corruption. It is now common knowledge that FRELIMO rigged the elections. The opposition party, PODEMOS, won that election with an emphatic margin. Paula Cristina Roque of the South African online newspaper, Daily Maverick, in an article titled, “Mozambique’s uprising triggered by rigged elections, corruption and poverty”, writes, “They (Mozambicans) live in poverty and are disillusioned by a (FRELIMO) government that controls a web of security, business, natural resources, organised crime and self-enrichment.”
She further asserts, “FRELIMO, like many hegemonic ruling parties of neighbouring countries, ensured its political permanence by allowing the political elite to economically profit”. You can substitute BDP for FRELIMO in the foregoing observation. The same applies to ZANU-PF in Zimbabwe, UNITA in Angola, and SWAPO in Namibia. These parties have become criminal syndicates involved in money laundering, rent-seeking and extortion in the service of the political class. Many people have lost trust in politicians. There is already apprehension that the UDC government might fall into the same corruption trap. Experience elsewhere on the continent has shown that, new governments have assumed power with good intentions but ended up engaging in a race to enrich themselves by stealing from the very same people who entrusted them, through their vote, with power to manage their affairs. Needless to say that the UDC government should be given space to settle down, acclamatise, and implement its policies. Batswana voted for the UDC because they want change. They voted for the UDC because it gave them hope for the future. The expectations are high, and the people cannot wait for too long for the UDC to deliver on their promises. The UDC must be warned, the nation is watching. “You engage in corruption at your own peril.” Batswana have given the party five years to manage their affairs. They believed that the UDC can free them from the excesses of the BDP, which included corruption. The gravy train must stop forthwith. Duma Boko and the UDC brigade are going to be shown the door in 2029 if the party becomes corrupt like the BDP. The most important take away from the absolute drubbing the BDP has just received is that the UDC has now inherited an angry and impatient electorate ready to see their lives improve under the new government. It is worrisome that, already, some UDC activists are demanding to be rewarded by the new administration for their “sweat, blood, and tears”. This evokes memories of the unfortunate statement made by the ANC stalwart, Smuts Ngonyama, who was the spokesperson of the presidency at Luthuli House in 2005, when he said, “I didn’t join the struggle to be poor.”
He uttered these words when he was implicated in a controversy regarding an improper transaction involving the sale of shares in a parastatal in South Africa. Some of the UDC activists, who expect to be rewarded, have criminal records. Others are known fraudsters. They expect the UDC to sanitise them and give them jobs in the public sector and parastatals. Since he took over as President, Boko has been consistent in saying that merit is going to trump everything else in the new administration. The nation is going to hold him to his word on this.
In an environment where politics is underwritten by corrupt corporate interests, the so-called captains of industry, of all hues, are already falling over each other to ingratiate themselves with the new regime. Even as this happens, a new cohort of “tenderpreneurs” is “loading”, and they are positioning themselves for the distribution of government contracts. These “tenderpreneurs”, who are affiliated to the UDC, will replace the “tenderpreneurs” who were prioritised to benefit from the largesse of the BDP crony capitalist State because it is now the turn of the “comrades” to eat. It is this sense of entitlement that contributed to the downfall of the BDP. If this persists, the looting of public funds that was happening under the BDP rule will continue unabated. And that spells trouble for the UDC.
One of the greatest lessons of the outcome of last month’s general elections is that the level of political consciousness amongst Batswana is high. They will be watching as the UDC replaces the BDP loyalists on the boards of parastatals, Land Boards, and Village Development Committees (VDCs) populating these structures with the party’s activists and side-lining everyone else. This amounts to about 10, 000 job opportunities nationwide. It is this pork-barrel that the BDP reserved for its own activists and supporters for all the years it was in power. If the UDC appropriates the pork-barrel exclusively to benefit its cadres, as the BDP did for the last 58 years, then five years from now, the people will meet with the party at the polling booth, and they will not hesitate to punish this administration.
Batswana expect the UDC government to deal decisively with corruption. A Commission of Inquiry should be set up, as a matter of urgency, to investigate corruption. Of course not all cases of corruption will be covered because the rot is deep. But at least the most obvious cases, which are known, and many others that whistle-blowers are willing to come forward and report, should be investigated. The culprits must be apprehended and tried. If they are convicted, they should go to jail, but also be made to return the money that they have stolen.
To demonstrate that the new UDC government is serious about fighting corruption, the President should appoint a new head of the DCEC, who is not tainted. The DCEC Act should be revised and the agency should report to Parliament. The President should make good on his stated intention to restructure the DIS. And the current DIS chief must go. Furthermore, if the President is to be believed that his government is going to fight corruption, he should lead by example by disclosing how much he is worth, as well as make his Cabinet ministers disclose their net worth in the interest of transparency and best practice. This would inspire confidence in the nation secure in the knowledge that the new administration is transparent and that the opaqueness, deceit and conmanship of the past regime are behind them.
