Botswana: Time to celebrate and contemplate

November 2nd, 2009

Gaborone (Botswana) - This year we celebrate the 43rd Independence Anniversary of our country. September 30, is a special day for the citizens of this country and everyone who has enjoyed the hospitality of their hospitality.

It is always important to celebrate what we have achieved as a nation at a time like this. We have had lasting peace and relative economic growth since the founding of our nation. These are worth celebrating. That we survived a turbulent neighbourhood at the height of minority white regimes supported by the strongest Western powers and Zionists is a credit to the resilience of Batswana and their institutions.

We should also celebrate what we have achieved in terms of improvements in the quality of life for ordinary people. We have fought battles against deprivation by providing, with some level of success, health and education. The majority of Batswana benefit from essential services, although more needs to be done in raising the level of access to these services. It is important to build more schools across the length and breadth of the country, but until Batswana have the means to send their children to the schools, we will not make much progress. Which brings us to our failures as a country.

We know that we have fallen many places down in the Global Competitive Report of the World Economic Forum because of our poor levels - and quality - of education, among many factors. We know that our levels of poverty remain unacceptably high. We also know that the skewed nature of our distribution of wealth is among the worst in the world. Predictably, our crime rate - especially the abhorrent transgressions of rape, so-called passion killings and invasive attacks in our homes - is high. We know these unflattering facts as much as we know what underlies them. Therefore, we know where to look and what to do.

Another area of serious concern is the progressive weakening of our democratic institutions that are being gobbled up by the burgeoning monolith of the Executive spurred on by the now unrestrained horror of one-partisanship. The motto emblazoned on the billboards on the perimeter wall of the hopeless House of Chiefs and the desolate National Assembly that proclaims "Our Parliament, Our Pride" has become a travesty that points to our collective self-deceit in the 21st Century. Ours so-called Members of Parliament go to the House to mark time for money, press for retirement packages and outdo one another with ingratiating themselves to the ever threatening Executive.

Lickspittles all!  The assault on civil liberties by the top-heavy Executive goes on uninhibited. But good citizens cannot run away from the responsibility to contemplate the direction our country is taking and to take immediate steps to correct this before it is too late. It is the role of every patriot to consider these matters during these holidays and come back to do the right thing.  

source.Mmegi (Botswana)