With history being made a day or so ago with the first diamond aggregation activities premiered in Gaborone, Batswana must know that they must want it hard enough and be willing to sweat and fight to get a major stake in this business. It ain’t for the faint hearted.
While Mmegi reports are that De Beers pledged to directly employ more Batswana in the industry, this statement on its own simply says we shall remain workers. And seldom do workers become millionaires. This must represent a chance for Botswana to contribute men and women to Forbes richest list-just like the gas and steel industries have done for Russia, the same way that technology and other areas of production have done for China and India. In here, most will be looking forward to jobs, jobs that are quite limited in number even.
The broader economy will benefit needless to say from this establishing of sorting, sales and marketing of diamonds locally. In fact, we are told that P45 billion pula or there about worth of diamonds will pass through Botswana. We are talking money here, big money.
And when we talk money, big money, those who wait to be told what to do will not reap much rewards. The real guys with an eye for business in this industry are not sitting back waiting for some parliamentary motion to tell DTC Botswana to give them more information. They are out there, spending sleepless nights researching on the intricacies of this industry and how it works. They are breaking up this chain to see where they fit in and what they can benefit from the industry.
The broad majority of us though are sitting back, each evening watching soapies for an average three hours, if not more. Next, the guys who spent sleepless nights will be shunned, labeled corrupt while in actual fact they wanted it enough to spend time studying it and dealing.
Even more exciting is that one need not be a diamond magnate to benefit. We know for example that the tourism sector could benefit...again, only if we were not such a slow country at appreciating concepts - especially by some of these organizations that we so dearly need to be at the forefront of things. But hell, they know how to take forever and not to follow things up. The transportation sector could also benefit, security services, banking and other areas.
But we do not seem to want it enough and we love to say government or some other entity should give us more information. No, if we want it hard enough, if we can stay the course then we should be able to go out research these things and make it work. It’s all upon us! In Antwerp and Tel Aviv the diamond communities are also closed, you must know how to break in. You sweat to do it though, use unusual tricks even, but if you want it hard enough then you must go to any length to make it happen.
