In a recent interview with eNCA’s Nkepile Mabuse, Botswana’s President Duma Gedeon Boko stated how he hasn’t been able to deliver his promise of creating 100,000 jobs in his first year. The president cited several reasons, one of them being the structures left behind by the previous government.
Journalist: “Did you deliver the 100,000 jobs in 12 months that you promised the people of Botswana on your way up to high office?”
President: “Not yet. When you inherit an economy structured in a particular way, there are certain realities that confront you once you are in, which you may not have been and couldn’t have been aware of when you were outside.”
Journalist: “You didn’t do the research?”
President: “We did as much research as we possibly could.”
Journalist: “Were you aware of that particular fact?”
President: “There are always limitations in every research. You can do all the research in the world and still not be able to pick up certain issues. It happens.
And that is why in every research, you’ll find a chapter or part that says, ‘What are the limitations of this study?’ So there are limitations to every research, to every study, to every proposition.
As the philosopher Aristotle says, there are two levels of truth. There’s the theoretical truth. You do all the research that’s the theoretical truth and you get into the thick of things praxis now and you realize there are certain things here that were not quite revealed at the level of the theoretical truth.
That’s the practical truth now. We are wrestling with praxis, with the practical truth, and the practical truth says this unequal economy in which the growth has been jobless for many years, that the coffers of the country had gone dry from 37 billion in the coffers three years down the line, you’re sitting at 300 million when we take over.
And you have to pay salaries the next month, and the entire recurrent budget of the government is about 1.4 billion.
You’ve got to wrestle with keeping the ship afloat. You can’t start doing fancy stuff about this thing.
You’ve got to keep it afloat, and that was the biggest existential challenge that the country faced. So forget about creating jobs in the short term. You have to wrestle with keeping people alive.
You’ve got to wrestle with making sure people receive their emoluments at the end of the month.
And we’ve kept that, and we’ve made sure that it happened even in the most difficult of circumstances.
And now, as I say, when these things are discussed or anybody makes an evaluation, you’ve got to take into account the cold plain of reality in which these things must happen. And it will tell you what is possible.”
Journalist: “You once said, ‘How can you sleep as a president when young people are unemployed?’ How do you?”
President: “I don’t. As a matter of fact, I don’t.”
Duma Gideon Boko is currently serving as the sixth president of Botswana since 1 November 2024 and as President of the Umbrella for Democratic Change since 2012. He also served as Leader of the Opposition from 2014 to 2019. Boko attained the presidency of the BNF in 2010.
