I believe as you go through this article somewhere in Botswana, a corporate governance workshop conducted by a White South African is on-going. These ‘corporate executives’ are riding so high that they see themselves as equivalents of your Steve Jobs’, Warren Buffet, Mo Ibrahim, Patrice Motsepe e.t.c. and treat locals running corporate governance consultancy firms with the worst possible malevolence.
If the infinite corporate botches, ineptitudes and indignities in our economy after 50 years of independence are anything to go by, then a strong argument can be made that international corporate governance canons may never be reached.
What are these ideals? They are regimes developed by different institutions in various countries. These regimes include the South African King Code of Corporate Governance and the UK Code of Corporate Governance. The guidelines carried by these regimes are so simple to follow that even pupils in LD classes would implement them with little difficulty. But it hasn’t been so for our poor ‘corporate executives’ as they call themselves.
What even frustrates with these folks is that they always claim expertise in the area of Corporate Governance; but who can blame anyway; they are always out on retreats at expensive resorts attending workshops on different areas of corporate governance resourced by the much acclaimed white South Africans. I believe as you go through this article somewhere in Botswana, a corporate governance workshop conducted by a White South African is on-going. These ‘corporate executives’ are riding so high that they see themselves as equivalents of your Steve Jobs’, Warren Buffet, Mo Ibrahim, Patrice Motsepe e.t.c. and treat locals running corporate governance consultancy firms with the worst possible malevolence. But what has come out of this arrogant, egoistical and insolent attitude? A crashed national airline that has become a liability on the national balance sheet; Fengyue Glass Manufacturing Palapye Glass Project that one politician described as ‘a monument of corruption’; a defunct Morupule B that has already cost the taxpayer hundreds of millions already and nearly turned into a colossal bomb that would have reduced the entire country to ashes. The list of these embarrassing scandals is endless! Due to restricted space we will only consider a few of them.
Parliamentary committee on statutory bodies and state enterprises report for the financial year ended 31st March 2011 revealed that Air Botswana hired a management consultant who was paid 100,000 BWP per month. The same consultant was previously engaged by BMC and paid at the rate of 4900BWP per hour the report revealed. The report further revealed that this consultant was husband to one of the senior partners of the auditing firm hired by Air Botswana during the period of this management consultant. The report notes that the consultant in question told the committee that he had secured both consultancies at BMC and Air Botswana through the help of the then Air Botswana Board Chairperson who was also a senior partner at one of the Auditing Firms in Botswana.
A self-assured BDC board, ‘proudly white South African trained’ shamelessly acceded to a bizarre request by their then CEO to vary their decisions. This is unheard of in the real world of corporate governance. The 2012 parliamentary special select committee of enquiry into the BDC’ Fengyue Glass Manufacturing project found that the decision to grant this request compromised the corporate oversight functions of the board and usurped its powers denying the BDC the safeguards that arise from Board scrutiny and oversight. Regarding the failure of this Glass project, the select committee found that ‘a culture of poor corporate governance at the BDC plagued the project from the outset’.
We will continue this discussion in the next edition of the Board Room.
Is virtuous corporate governance in Botswana a phantasm?
