What the EFF and ANC can learn from the desert people

Here’s my theory about southern African governance: the closer you are to a desert, the better you run your country. Let’s take, as the first example, neighbour Botswana, a poor protectorate huddling under the protection of the British Crown until independence in 1966.

Sitting astride the semi-desert Kalahari, Botswana was dependent on agriculture – and cattle ranching at that. Its first president, Sir Seretse Khama, was a man who blended deep respect for the traditions of his Ngwato people with the sort of modern thinking he had acquired when educated in England.

But overall, it was a government marked by conservatism. No surprise that its currency, the pula, is named for water, which is a vital commodity in that part of the world. Living on the edge of a desert, I believe, makes people husband their resources carefully, because they know the future is uncertain.

In Botswana, after diamonds were discovered in the ’70s, the country and its government could have gone mad in a spending spree with its newfound mega-wealth. That they didn’t was testimony to the doctrine of conserving what you have against possible tough times.

It was interesting that, even in the ’80s, when Gaborone, the Botswana capital, was at the centre of diamond wealth, it looked like the poor cousin of Lucas Mangope’s homeland citadel of Mmabatho, less than 60km across the border in South Africa.

Botswana is by no means a paragon of democratic virtue – and the ruling Botswana Democratic Party still controls society with an iron fist – but its economy is demonstrably strong. You don’t have to look at the strength of the pula against the rand to see that.

There may be plenty of money – as demonstrated by the country’s reserves and its balance of payments (something we should envy) – but the government has not, by and large, splurged. The same might be said in many ways for Botswana’s western, and our northwestern, neighbour, Namibia.

Last week marked its 29th anniversary as an independent state. Since then, you have heard very little about trouble in that arid country, which sits on both the Kalahari and Namib deserts.

While not as good an example as Botswana, there has been nothing in Namibia to compare to our looting and state capture. Namibia still works: its infrastructure is good and it is still a unique tourism destination.

In truth, the ruling South West African People’s Organisation (Swapo) conducts similar “rule forever” politics as do its neighbours in Botswana. But in the fiscal sense, there seems to be conservatism.

Is it possible its leaders know that to party today is to starve tomorrow? Or that wasting water today means thirst tomorrow? That’s not in the nature of those in other African countries where the weather is much kinder. In the Congo, with vast resources and wonderful soil and good rainfall, there have been decades of looting and plunder. Ditto with Zimbabwe.

And so, to South Africa.

We live – at least our government does, and so do pie-in-the-sky populists like the EFF – as if our resources (both natural and taxpayer-generated) are endless.

Here’s my suggestion: send a fact-finding delegation to our desert-dwelling neighbours. And learn one lesson from them: don’t take anything for granted.

Brendan Seery.

For more news your way, download The Citizen’s app for iOS and Android.