Masisi's massive goof

| Thursday October 24, 2013 15:18

 This followedthe minister’s recent utterances at a Kgotla meeting in Thamaga that people must engage in bootlicking if they should hope to progress in life. Unbelievably, in order to encourage others to follow his example, Masisi went on to inform his audience that he was from a long line of kowtowing lickspittles.  Whether the minister uttered these words in jest and to what degree he meant it seriously remains his secret – he being one in high places in a government that venerates secrecy, albeit one that purports to be democratic. Whatever the case may be, the words are inappropriate and can only bode ill for a country that qualified for the label of developmental state as early as the 1970s. This is because the government, though capitalist in orientation, is responsible for the country’s macro-economic planning and responsible for the financing of major projects by means of tenders. In such a state, the government is the biggest actor in the economy and its ministers are at the very heart of mega projects put out to public tender. God save us if the ministers should be lickspittles!

 That is why we beg to differ with Masisi in the serious or silly matter of calling on Batswana to become a nation of sycophants. The gaffe – even for a man who is always at pains to project himself as the driver and defender of the government’s confused but vote-inspired poverty eradication programme – is a blooper of the highest order. In our view, ministers should foster innovation and reward honest-to-goodness hard work. This is especially important now in the face of recent research that found that the work ethic in Botswana leaves a lot to be desired.

Such a change of mindset is vital also because although a developmental state, Botswana is essentially capitalist in orientation and is therefore vulnerable to the excesses of private capital. Needless to say, that calls for exceptionally high ethical standards that are right away at odds with sycophancy. In this ostensibly free enterprise system, strong trade unions and robust media are necessary to act as a credit balance against the transgressions of profiteers in the form of ‘tenderpreneurs’ and their greasy friends in government even at the best of times. Thus, for a minister of state to call for sycophancy on a nationwide level is deplorable, indeed.

We write this mindful of Masisi’s recent equally calamitous words on Btv that newspapers should be silenced because they propagate lies. And although we say his stuff about the desirability of sycophancy is reprehensible, we believe that Batswana can see the type of man that Masisi is: a proud lickspittle who detests being depicted as one by newspapers.

In our view, people should make the grade of Cabinet minister not because they kowtow to the mighty one who chooses them but because they are worthy men and women who can take this country forward.

Today’s thought

“No price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.” - Rudyard Kipling