Through this article, Real Alternative Party seeks to illuminate the public understanding of the relentless pauperization of Batswana in the name of economic efficiency. The Real Alternative Party seeks to puncture the pretensions of BDP ruling class and expose the deep truths about the corruption calamities which will inevitably befall the country, Botswana. We find it appropriate to alert Batswana that a moment of reckoning has come for Batswana to realize that the BDP seeks to leave a legacy of nightmarish and intractable horror.
The mismanagement of national resources and the blunder of BDP leadership has to be understood from its political rationality; Liberalism. The ultimate reason for all the corruption crisis within the Government is that it is in the nature of liberal politics to crave for accumulation of riches. As a matter of fact, the current mode of looting the National Petroleum Fund is the most extreme expression of financial crime; the symptom of neo-liberal politics.
Under the pretense that the incorporation of finance asset management companies such as Kgori Capital and Capital Management Botswana aims to promote economic efficiency, the truth is it reflects the BDP laissez – faire spirit of an age of growing corporate power, where such companies` managers are granted a huge lee way to do what they want at the expense of national interest. This mischief is the new financial revolution of the neo-liberal politics, where money – power is being transferred to corporate bank accounts run by people who are in the purest sense of the word unaccountable and therefore irresponsible.
The neo liberal pattern of engaging finance/ assets management companies on behalf of Government departments has brought – up a decidedly free – wheeling private enterprise mode in which companies and individuals pursue their own goals, and government is kept out of the way under the assumption that the public good will advance automatically. The neo – liberal trick of asset management so dearly espoused by the BDP State is meant for the local predatory elites to plunder the public wealth, conceal it, launder it and sneak it offshore. The financial dealers claiming expertise in financial/ asset management are in the true sense of the word, agents of capitalism.
The basic causes of anarchy and wastage in Botswana government and the selfish desires for wealth accumulation have pressed upon the BDP bureaucrats and its political leadership to cheat, prioritize each other`s greediness at the expense of the economy. Behind all these corrupt practices lie capitalist imperatives – the competition for power and the most extreme expression of bestiality and barbarism of the BDP system – character assassination and intimidation. BDP is created to thrive on narrow self-interest combined with a culture of collusion. Its defenders are neurotically quick to impute mean motives and a hidden agenda to their critics.
It seems according to BDP politics, it is acceptable to get rich by undermining the laws of the land. Rugged individualism has morphed into a disregard, even a contempt for democracy and for Batswana at large. The truth is the rich are never satisfied, they always try to keep up with implacable, inhuman rhythm of an unlimited power to amass everything their hearts could desire. It is no accident that the key figures of BDP are found to be involved in corruption, because they are driving a cunningly contrived political ideology which has nothing to do with answering people`s needs but everything to do with self-enrichment.
Beneath the veneer of systematic looting of national funds lies terrible poverty, inequality and unemployment. What is actually happening is nothing less than a head – on assault on the foundations of social democracy and on accountability and development. The inevitable aim of the BDP state is to enrich the narrow, stratum of Botswana population, while public debts created through corruption will be borne by the workers through levies.
The nasty historical taint committed by the BDP ruling class contradicts the accolades showered to the BDP Government as a well-regulated, transparent and cooperative jurisdiction. There is no interest whatsoever by the BDP to invest in the things that make society richer such as setting – up factories, relevant job-market training, research, wages and so on. The saddest part of this is that whereas the BDP ruling class is in the race to become multi- millionaires by crooked ways, hundreds of workers continue to be sacked from government parastatals, tens of thousands are unemployed, living side by side with the masses in abject poverty.
The BDP leadership is composed of manipulators of the ambitions of the people who have managed to create strange new programs for the so-called poverty alleviation, that the poor are paradoxically expected to flaunt them as their proudest achievement. The existing programs of poverty alleviation can never rescue the poor from the exclusion and deprivation, as the BDP political art is crafted to save the rich rather than relieving the poor. Even when the poor become a little less poor, because of such poverty alleviation programs, they can never keep pace with the available products and services in displays of merchandise in shop windows as they are too expensive for their inadequate income/ profit.
In the ultimate as the culture of corruption permeates the corridors of power, the fragility of the economy as a whole increase, in the process worsening poverty and inequality. Corruption by the Botswana top-dogs has the potential to have impact on the national development plans as Botswana is being-cash strapped. Corruption is a disaster for the integrity of Botswana`s democracy.
Yet this is the whole point of the BDP politics; neo-liberalism. At the heart of neo-liberalism is the involvement of insiders abusing the common good in secrecy and impunity, undermining the rules and systems that promote the public interest, and undermining our faith in those rules and systems. Neo-liberalism is the battleground of the rich versus the poor, the people versus the corporations, the financial crimes against the democracies. It is the incessant drive to preserve and enhance the wealth of the already wealthy. It is the worst form of plutocracy!
Brother Chairman Gaontebale Mokgosi
Real Alternative Party
Of the bdp and its whizzo scheme of profiteering!
