Botswana must benefit from hosting KP Secretariat

Botswana has won the bid to host the Secretariat for the Kimberley Process, beating several other bidders, who in no small measure are economically superior than us.

There is a lot riding on this role. It evidently means a lot of work is only starting. For Botswana to have been given such an important role, clearly is an opportunity for the country to cement itself as one of the biggest producers, not only in terms of carats produced, but also in terms of the discussions and deliberations around promotion of natural diamonds’ integrity. It no longer makes sense for Botswana to churn out lots of diamonds, which are consumed the world over, and have impacted economies positively, only for the country to remain a dark horse when it comes to voicing its concerns regarding blood diamonds. As matter of fact, Botswana produces natural diamonds, which have since the 1970s been the mainstay of the economy. If the country, cannot ward off conflict diamonds from entering the market of natural diamonds, Botswana will be doomed. Frankly speaking, there is no other commodity that can replace diamonds today. This week, President Mokgweetsi Masisi summed it up perfectly when he stated that the hosting of Kimberly Process Secretariat ( KP) provides the country with a perfect opportunity to become a focal point of influence for promoting the integrity of natural diamonds for development. In deed the President is right, since virtually all the development in the country can be traced to natural diamonds in one way or the other. In recent years, Botswana, as a member of the KP, has attracted a sizeable number of diamond cutting and manufacturing companies from across the world. As the Secretariat of KP, Botswana will be strategically positioned to monitor the activities of these companies and to ensure that they don’t illegally import conflict diamonds into the country for processing, and later export them to war zones. By nature, conflict diamonds do not support any sustainable development as espoused by United Nations Sustainable Development Goals ( UN SDGs) 2030 which Botswana fully supports. Once the Secretariat of KP is up and running in 2024, Botswana is expected to have contributed 20 percent of its annual operational budget. It will be important for the country to get value for its money. As a member of KP, Botswana cannot afford to let this golden opportunity slip from its grip, since this will affect its multipronged strategy of transforming the diamonds sector through value chain promotion.

If there was ever a time for the country to voice its position in anything related to natural diamonds and be heard, it is now! We call on government and other stakeholders to support the Kimberley Process Secretariat.

GUESS WHAT ELSE MASISI RESET

Former president Ian Khama sought to overshadow the national principles with his four and later five Ds roadmap. Even when it became patently clear that there was only one D – Directorate of Intelligence Services – Khama would still refer to five Ds in his public speeches. An uncommon species of sycophancy elevated the 5Ds to gospel cast in stone: in the Botswana Police Service programme on Btv, a police officer insisted that they should be listed in the exact same order that Khama had listed them in his 2008 inauguration speech. Khama’s successor, President Mokgweetsi Masisi, has his own 5Dslike pipe dream which he calls the Reset Agenda. As part of resetting, he has been renaming ministries, moving civil servants around, donating scrawny bulls across the country and has suspended showing up at the homesteads grieving families with Btv in tow. However, there is something that Masisi has demonstrably, literally reset. The evidence suggests that his Reset Agenda didn’t begin in 2021 but on the very day that he became president. Khama told a South African journalist that on that day ( April 1, 2018) Masisi kept him waiting for a long time. Masisi has kept everybody waiting ever since and this past Monday, kept MPs waiting for his official opening of the 2022/ 23 parliamentary year. It has become clear that the president has reset his wrist watch. The question is: by how many hours? “Hours” because he is always hours and not minutes late. So what exactly does Masisi mean when he says that he wants the nation to “embrace” the Reset Agenda? Does he mean that he wants everyone to reset their timepieces back by hours and also show up late? That won’t be necessary because most Batswana have long implemented the reset agenda.

BDP LEADERS OVERLOOKED FOR NOBEL PRIZE

As Sirs Seretse Khama and Ketumile Masire, Festus Mogae and Ian Khama before him, President Mokgweetsi Masisi used the opportunity of Monday’s stateof- the- nation address to make promises that he won’t be fulfilling. In that regard, this address – as others before it, has become a work of fiction.

One wonders why the Nobel Committee has overlooked Botswana Democratic Party leaders for 56 years. The Swedish people ( who give out Nobel prizes) can’t claim to not know us and what our leaders do to us because not only does Botswana appear on the world map, we are related to them by marriage. We understand that awarding the Nobel Prize for Literature to Botswana would mean putting Mogae, Khama and Masisi on the same stage and that the man in the middle might not want that. There should be a way around that little problem – like holding the award ceremony in a ( Swedish) Grippen jet fighter.

REVISED RETRENCHEE LIST

In the not- too- distant past, we suggested that government’s public relations officers ( especially those in the arms of force) should be the first to be retrenched when the government does carry out such exercise as it has threatened. The reason is a plain and simple one: if a computer can be programmed to automatically respond to messages that come in when the user of an email account is out of the office, it can also be programmed to generate messages like “No comment”, “We can neither confirm nor deny those allegations”, “We can’t discuss that issue in the media” or just ignore written questions from the press. Pharmacists are another retrenchment target. Drugs have run out in all government health facilities and some pharmacists have taken to making TikTok videos of them dancing against a background of empty shelves. At the end of the month, they get paid. We will keep updating this list as we interact with the civil service.

PUBLISH DONATIONS POLICY

There is evidently a policy relating to donations because a discernible pattern has emerged. When donations are made to the poor, invitations are sent out to all media houses as well as all gossip- andslander rags on Facebook. Hours later, pictures of an embarrassed poor person standing alongside a benefactor smiling from ear to ear at the handing- over ceremony are all over. Oddly, when the same benefactors pull strings behind the scenes to donate multi- million pula tenders to family members and friends, everything is hush- hush. If public humiliation comes standard with small- value donations, beneficiaries would prefer donations of multi- million pula tenders.

RE BA BONA HA

Ina lebe seromo, Batswana say in Setswana that means that a name foretells fate. We probably ought to pay attention to this wisdom if we are to develop our sports programme well enough to get good returns on our investments and produce worldclass athletes. The Botswana National Sport Commission may have sealed the fate of young people enrolled in a grassroots sports development project it calls “Re ba bona ha” - which literally means “we see them here.” Indeed, we have seen “Re ba bona ha” enrollees here over and over again when we should actually be seeing them competing internationally at all major sporting events. Here’s a thought: rename this programme “Re ba bona kwaa!” (“we see them over there”) and see what happens.