Just as one repacks
a hastily filled rucksack after a few days on the trail - throwing out the
waste, putting things in order of importance, and balancing the load - I
am going to repack my theoretical baggage and argue that countries develop
when those controlling power find it in their immediate interest to
promote policies and build institutions that ensure rapid capital
accumulation.
This is not to
disregard "noble intentions" but rather to underline the primacy of
"self-interest" and also to demonstrate that the two are not mutually
exclusive. Development is a byproduct of their coincidence: when the
pursuit of leaders' self-interest requires democratic institutions and
fosters development.
At independence in
1966, Botswana was the worst of Britain's colonial possessions, a
backwater of empire. It had no army, no strong bureaucracy, and a very
weak middleclass. The country's capital city was a small town inside South
Africa - Gaborone was only built after independence. It depended on cattle
production, export of manual labour to South African mines and customs
union fees from South Africa. These weaknesses were to prove a blessing in
disguise.
The first president,
Seretse Khama, was the chief of the Bamangwato, the largest tribe in the
country. This gave him the political legitimacy to strip other chiefs of
their political power unlike in Uganda where, Milton Obote, whose Langi
ethnicity coupled with his "commoner's" background only helped to
consolidate hatred against him when he abolished the kingdoms of Buganda,
Bunyoro and Toro.
Khama was also the
largest cattle rancher, while Obote was a non-propertied individual and
President Yoweri Museveni only accumulated his ranches when he was already
in power. Khama's vice president, Ketumile Masire, was the second largest
cattle rancher in the country and many of the leaders of the ruling party,
the Botswana Democratic Party (BDP), were large ranchers as well who
sought to use the state as an instrument in promoting returns to cattle
ranching.
To achieve this,
they needed a strong and competent bureaucracy to negotiate international
treaties. Today, Botswana is one of the largest exporters of beef to the
European Union. When they discovered large diamond deposits, this same
bureaucracy proved a great asset, negotiating one of the most rewarding
diamond contracts in the world with the Anglo American company,
D'Beers.
Power in most of
post independence Africa went to the dispossessed groups: Kwame Nkrumah
who organised the "Veranda Boys" in Ghana or Julius Nyerere who mobilised
peasants in Tanzania. In Uganda political power went to a deprived elite
who sought to employ it to "Africanise" business by nationalising foreign
assets, or dispossessing rich Indians merchants as Idi Amin did.
In Botswana,
political power at independence went into the hands of a propertied elite
who sought alliance with international capital to promote their interests.
But history is important in shaping political trajectories. Because there
was a limited presence of multi national or Asian capital, Botswana did
not have a strong history of racial privilege where foreigners owned a
large slice of the economy while the indigenous people worked for them as
cleaners as did Uganda where at independence there was a lot of resentment
to Asian capital.
The above factors
explain why Botswana pursued policies that favored foreign direct
investment, private enterprise and free markets without generating popular
hostility and Uganda sought to dispossess foreign capital, stifle market
mechanisms and promote state control of the economy through parastatals.
The point is: Uganda's particular colonial history where the growth of
indigenous capital was stifled in favor of European and Asian capital
meant that free markets and private enterprise in post independence
scenario would have tended to reinforce racial privilege, a factor that
was politically explosive.
Equally, because at
independence, Botswana had a miniscule bureaucracy staffed mainly by the
British, and lacked trained natives to fill the gap, the political
leadership could afford not only to retain, but also to hire more foreign
experts - white, Asian and African - without generating popular political
discontent. There were hardly calls for indigenisation of the civil
service till recently and this allowed the state to promote the
development of a competent merit-based bureaucracy while in Uganda, the
bureaucracy quickly degenerated into a network for patrimonial and
clientelistic networks privileging tribal and political considerations
over professional competence and probity.
A combination of the
above allowed a broad ruling coalition to emerge in Botswana comprising of
the landed and cattle ranching elite (predominantly indigenous), the
business community (mainly foreign), traditional chiefs and the higher
echelons of the bureaucracy. This coalition is today expressed as follows:
the president, Festus Mogae, is a former bureaucrat (both national and
international - having worked for the IMF) who joined politics after
reaching the pinnacle of preeminence in the bureaucracy. His vice
president, Ian Khama, (son of the first president) is a former army
commander and now doubles as chief of the Bamangwato. The secretary
general of the BDP is an Asian motor and supermarket tycoon.
It should therefore
not come as a surprise that this elite coalition in charge of the state in
Botswana has tended to pursue fiscal conservatism at the expense of public
expenditure policies that would ensure the benefits of economic prosperity
spread to the poorest segments of society, hence a very high percentage of
people (50 percent) living below the poverty line. This has also had
debilitating effects on the country through the spread of HIV/Aids as the
country has the highest prevalence rates in the whole world, in 2001 were
standing at 36 percent of the population. The poor have little say in that
country's political process.
How can this be
possible in a country with a functioning multi-party democracy, someone
may ask? Botswana is a very large country territorially - almost five
times the size of Uganda. But while our republic has 26 million people,
Botswana has 1.8 million people. In some constituencies, a candidate for
parliament has to traverse 700 kilometres to move from one part of his
constituency to another. This requires a lot of money, and only those with
links to the state can afford the costs of these very expensive campaigns.
This has crippled the opposition and played into the hands of the BDP.
Also, the BDP's position is strengthened by its alliance with chiefs who
bring their subject's votes.
Geographically, at
independence Botswana was sandwiched between hostile and volatile
neighbours all of whom threatened the security and stability of the new
republic: apartheid South Africa to the south, Portuguese ruled Angola to
the north, Ian Smith's white supremacist nation of Southern Rhodesia to
the east and apartheid South Africa's colony of Namibia to the west. The
imperative of a black nation's success was high in this white-sandwiched
country.
Someone may say that
Uganda under President Yoweri Museveni has also reformed the economy
towards more openness to trade and private investment - national and
international. The country has also sustained economic growth and
registered a level of institutional reform. What allowed this to happen?
Is our nation therefore on the road to Botswana and Singapore? I will
pursue this question another time.
