Andrew Sesinyi Speaks...

NO WATER WITH WATER EVERY WHERE

It is a fact that Africans, Botswana nationals included, are at the bottom of the food chain. It is also true that Africans are the most needy, dependent and perpetual scroungers always looking for handouts. And this is being written even now, with conviction, by an African who is nonetheless, proud to be black and in Africa.

The plight of Africans lies in their sycophancy, and yes, laziness of body, mind and thought. They worship dictators, plunderers and are tolerant of disorder, lawlessness, corruption and incompetence. It is not an African culture- it is a product of inferiority complex and acceptance of status quo no matter how abysmal standards may be. Africans would rather run to other countries than work to change their own circumstances.

Pic: the author and his nephew, Shimane Mokgautsi

It is this truth that shall set us free. We have to introspect and dislike what we find in there, inside us, in our minds, thoughts, deeds and lands.

The incompetent governments that we have are our own creation and they are sustained by us. We only become visible protestors when we are engaging in staged violent activities that promote the entrenchment of dictatorships. We are worshippers of idols largely in the form of the dictators we call our leaders. We contaminate our cultures with idolatry titles of greatness that we bestow on incompetent leaders. That is why we are at the bottom of the food chain, the least developed mentally, socially, economically and scientifically. We have fertile lands but infertile minds. How else can we explain such abject poverty, such hunger, such scarcity of food in lands where almost any plant can grow…where wild fruits and other edible plants are in abundance but quickly decimated to make space for absentee landlords and prestigious projects of the political elite?

Our governments do not deserve titles of governance. They blame nature for their people’s poverty; they blame other races for the lack of abundance among their people; they even blame God for their abysmal performance as leaders. It rains in Africa, and it rains a lot. As it rains cats and dogs, the leaders sit in their mansions wining and dining whilst limitless water resources flow, flood and drift towards the seas and oceans, unharvested.

Pic: Gathering rain clouds captured by author's iPhone

Semi-arid countries such as Botswana are a self-contradiction of development because while their few dams hold waters that are subject to loss through evaporation, little effort is made to harvest rain waters through reservoirs and other means. Rain pours on roof tops and flows out into floods without being captured into containers for leaner years. The Botswana infrastructure is not linked to the country’s needs; the infrastructure is not linked to harvesting of natural resources such as rainfall; it is not designed to preserve and conserve. Such lack of thought and foresight is contrasted against government handouts and wails about how the country is prone to rainless drought periods.

Botswana, as one of the benchmarks of failure by Africa to feed its people, has its population fed on empty rhetoric about how governance is striving to improve food production. Yet successive government administrations have abandoned the past colonial innovations of catching rain water in household reservoirs, which used to be the norm.  One would think that if Africans were evolving normally, like people of other continents, contemporary leaders would not only be improving on the excellence of their predecessors but adopting heightened approaches to saving water, or as one prefers to say, harvesting the rain water.

Pic: Sunset over author's modest farm captured via iPhone

Another glaring anomaly, which exists mainly because of poor innovative approaches by governments in Africa- Botswana included- is the neglect of underground water resources. Understandably, underground water must be exploited with conservation regulation because it does have a bearing on present and future tenures of flora and fauna; but if properly tapped on, there would be abundant water resources to water crops, livestock and humans- leading to greater strides in attaining the objectives of food sufficiency. Most households could be run on underground water resources; most farms would prosper from underground water resources; most water restrictions inhibiting food production would be lessened if proper methods were applied to the exploitation of underground water resources.

Studies have been conducted but implementation failed on the subject matter of exploiting Botswana’s underground water resources. By 2017, there ought to have been proper regulation, appropriate licensing and comprehensive infrastructure throughout Botswana facilitating the better use of this precious underground natural resource. Botswana is crippled by periodic drought through bad choice of governance. It is not just a question of constructing more dams (with their high evaporation rate) but a balance of exploitation of both seasonal rainfall and underground water resources. There is a poverty of rationale to explain why after over 50 years, Botswana should still be importing virtually all its food from the colonial streams of supply. There is insufficient justification for the current levels of poverty caused mainly by a lack of food. It is actually a huge embarrassment that food hampers should be the norm in poverty alleviation instead of empowerment of citizenry to produce food, even if it were at subsistence level.

Pic: a mesmerizing cloud formation close to sunset captured by iPhone

Leaders and other officials travel extensively, at the expense of the taxpayer, to developed countries and more innovative benchmark areas such as Libya, Israel, Emirates and other drought prone examples, but they all return to write reports, and file them away without action or follow up. This is the legacy of self –defeat in Africa, to which even Botswana clings as if there is still need to invent the wheel.

Today’s generation owes it to itself, its forefathers and posterity, to adopt a zero tolerance approach to incompetence, corruption, apathy and official neglect of basic development imperatives that can put their country on a good footing and make them proud.

Botswana has taken the lead before, and it still can do so again, and more!

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