The long road to meaningful mindset change
Lewanika Timothy | Wednesday October 2, 2024 10:55
It holds true that pre-conceived notions about one’s ability inherently have a bearing on what one can achieve and accomplish. It is equally true that mindset change is both as abstract and difficult as brain surgery, especially when required at a national level.
This month as public service technocrats gathered in Gaborone for their inaugural Human Resource conference, Directorate of Public Service Management (DPSM) director, Gaone Macholo, had some spine-chilling updates to share over the poor performance of service delivery in the country. According to Macholo, poor service delivery continues to be the hallmark of public service performance, severely harming project delivery. As an example, a meagre five percent of the Transitional National Development Plan (TNDP), which ends in March 2025, has been completed.
“One of the main challenges we continue to face in this country is poor service delivery,” Macholo told the conference.
“Under the TNDP, we have achieved only five percent of what we set out to do and only four percent of the projects have been delivered.”
Data shared by Macholo shows that 53% of the projects planned under the P64 billion TNDP were stuck at between completion rates of one percent to 49%, while 14% of projects were between 50% and 79% completion rate.
While the TNDP’s projects have a medium-term horizon, top civil servants concede that the five percent completion rate is a bottom-of-the-barrel performance that reflects the weakness in the country’s service delivery. Implementation has been a long-standing challenge for project delivery in the country. Significant government resources have been allocated each year to development programmes and projects covering economic infrastructure, social development and human capital development, to create prosperity for all citizens. Poor implementation costs the country billions of pula in direct and opportunity costs, but more importantly, denies citizens critical services and forestalls their economic aspirations. At its heart, poor implementation of projects not only means wasting the millions on consultants who draw up project plans but also the potential benefits and opportunities to citizens such as access to electricity, water and other infrastructure, are lost in the wind.
At a time when nearly the entire budget deficit is being financed by domestic and external debt, poor implementation means taxpayers foot the bill for interest whose principal is not being optimally put to use. Government’s TNDP has hit an implementation wall, with project delivery remaining sluggish despite numerous efforts.
In the broader mindset change required at community level, other indicators show that little progress is being made as well. Social concerns have been on the rise nationally with social ills increasing. At the top of the list is the scourge of gender-based violence (GBV), as well as increasing cases of murder, rape, and defilement, with women and girls usually being the victims.
Botswana has long faced a GBV crisis and the social ills do not seem to be ending as men continue to violate women and girls, keeping the police busy. Police have been sensitising both men and women about rape issues, but their efforts continue to fall on deaf ears as women and girls live in deep fear of attackers who continue to violate them as they please.
Over the past festive season, police recorded 155 rape cases that occurred mostly at entertainment places, something that has entrenched Botswana’s position amongst countries in the world with the highest number of rape incidents. Women and girls continue to suffer violation at the hands of their male counterparts, as they are attacked and raped even in the comfort of their homes.
Change surely stands far
off in the distant horizon.President Mokgweetsi Masisi last year launched the Mindset Change campaign, as part of the post-Covid transformational effort dubbed the Reset Agenda. Determined to build a resilient economy and nation that will have the wherewithal to withstand future predicaments, the President launched the Mindset Change campaign as the foundation of new policies and initiatives designed to make Botswana great again.
“Mindset Change: It is extremely important that we change our mindset if our goal to attain high income country status is to be achieved.
“We cannot remain locked in the thinking of the unproductive eras and expect to escape the middle-income trap. “This comes with developing capacity for entrepreneurship, eliminating our inferiority complex, and implementing government and strategic reforms that put citizen economic inclusion at the centre of our economic development initiatives.
“Fully adopting this mindset change will result in self-actualisation amongst our people,” Masisi said.
The focus on economic indicators without an action plan to cut out the rotten tomatoes is in itself handicapping to government. For many years, economists have laid most of the blame for Botswana’s unproductivity on a bloated public service that is unmonitored, incapacitated, and costly to run. A call of action in mindset change would have to at least begin by taking hard decisions and justifying them through a call of action for change.
A work of literature in one of the world’s economic giants, American historian, James Adams, coined the famous American dream: “A dream of a better, richer, and happier life for all our citizens of every rank.”
Adams at the time was on a quest to persuade Americans to turn away from a mere materialistic approach to life and rather pursue a holistic wealth agenda that has since been the founding philosophy for that nation.
The historian’s philosophy shows the importance of a simplistic, whole encompassing approach to national mindset change; one that is not underpinned by varying strategies, policies, and initiatives that do not speak to each other and most of the time operate in silos.
Another example from across the globe is when Deng Xiaoping of China came to power in 1978. He reduced the one-man state control and repressions, increased collective leadership, replaced hardcore autocratic communism with more free markets and increasingly larger doses of capitalism. Xiaoping also opened China up to foreigners to learn and earn from them. The new philosophy simply centred on “an open market approach to international trade”.
It was like sprinkling water on fertile ground that led to a great blossoming. From those years until now, China has experienced a classic capitalist rejuvenation that has led to a boom in which the economy, living standards, and debt have grown greatly.
The quest and notion of mindset change is a welcome development in Botswana. However the road to change may take longer than anticipated.