a BNF perspective Part 1
When part of the country’s aggregate mass of material wealth produced in a year is determined and used to replace constant capital in the form of the wear and tear on equipment, and the value of raw and other materials, the remainder in the form of variable capital and surplus value constitutes the national income of the country. National income under capitalism is created by workers, peasants, craftspersons and intellectuals employed in the sphere of material production – industry, agriculture, transport and so on and so forth. No national income is created in the non-productive sphere such as the government machine, the BDF, the Police, the DIS, medical institutions and universities like UB. All outlays in these non-productive sectors are covered out of national income. The government machine and armed and security forces absorb the bulk of national income and therefore restricts its growth.
The distribution of national income always assumes the class character of the dominant social order, in this case, the capitalist social system obtaining in Botswana. It is carried out in the interest of the exploiters rather than the workers who ironically produce it. The main distribution of national income is between the workers and the capitalists. Workers receive wages – the product of their necessary labour time, while the different groups of capitalists, namely bankers, land owners, merchants and industrial capitalists appropriate the surplus value – the sum total of the workers’ unpaid surplus labour time – the source of surplus value and profit. After distribution among workers and capitalists then follows a secondary distribution of national income in the form of payments for various services.
Part of the incomes of the working class are distributed through the national budget in the interests of the bourgeois state. It is used for individual capitalist consumption and expansion of production. The bulk of the budget is claimed by the bourgeois state for the maintenance of the armed and police forces, penal institutions, judicial bodies and the state bureaucracy at the expense of the working people. A disturbing trend in Botswana is the way the unproductive military forces gobble up the lion’s share of the national income even in the absence of a war in the country. The main source of revenue for the state budget is the taxes levied on the population.
Another reason why the workers’ share of national income is small is that the BDP regime deliberately made Botswana a low wage economy.
Indeed taxes serve as an instrument of the additional exploitation of wage workers outside the confines of the productive sphere. This diminishes the workers’ share of the national income which is further reduced by escalating prices of basic commodities, a high industrial reserve army of the unemployed (about 40%) that enables employers to drive down the wages of those in employment as well as a weak and divided trade union movement. Many workers can barely afford basic services like housing and education for their children. And yet the state turns a blind eye to companies that evade payment of taxes by keeping their money in countries known for low taxes.
Another reason why the workers’ share of national income is small is that the BDP regime deliberately made Botswana a low wage economy. In 1970 the state engaged a consultant by the name of Professor Dharam Ghai to ‘draft a long term wages policy consonant with National Development’. He recommended that the country was faced with two options; ‘Either to have a small but relatively highly paid labour force in the modern formal sector, or a larger but lowly paid labour force’. The country achieved neither of Dharam Ghai’s two objectives. We have a small poorly paid workforce earning starvation wages with a huge gap between nominal and real wages.
It is unclear whether workers will get any salary increase this year. The regime rubs its hands in glee as BOFEPUSO and BOPEU slug it out in the courts of law over who should sit in the Bargaining Council to decide on wage increases for the workers. On the surface it looks as if workers are the authors of their own misfortunes – quibbling over who should be on the Bargaining Council instead of getting on with the negotiations and yet we all know that these are fruits of the regimes’ divisive tactics. They mischievously drove a wedge between the two unions. Obviously in BOPEU leadership they found acquiescent stooges, reengages and quislings ready and willing to betray the cause of the workers for the sake of their own personal aggrandizement. The regime prefers to announce salary increases itself in order to undermine and undercut the influence of the trade union movement.
If one were to subject the budget to SafeAssign it would probably reveal 100% plagiarism. All budgets since independence are 100% plagiarized because there is no acknowledgement whatsoever of the sources used to draw them up. And yet BDP MPs had the temerity and nerve to criticize the Leader of Opposition Duma Boko for alleged plagiarism. It was a holier-than-thou attitude designed to score cheap debating points. Why does the BDP see the speck in Boko’s eyes, but fail to see the log in their own eyes? The BNF position has always been that for the Leader of Opposition to present an alternative budget in parliament there must be greater transparency in terms of disclosure of the sources on which the budget is based. And the opposition must be accorded enough time before the budget is presented for a meaningful debate to take place. For purposes of reducing parliament to a talking shop and a rubber-stamp institution the regime has flatly refused to accede to the demands of the opposition.
The richest 20% of the population commands 70% of national income while the poorest receive only 2.2% of national income.
Be that as it may, the national budget is an opportunity for the country to identify and prioritize the country’s national problems, and not only propose solutions to those problems but indicate clearly the role the society is expected to play in solving them. Given that according to Professor Good the country ‘has acquired the dubious distinction of having the worst inequalities in the world’ the budget was a window of opportunity to tackle structural poverty, bridge income inequalities and create jobs. On this score, Matambo’s budget is a dismal failure. Commenting on the way a handful of capitalists are getting away with murder for the ecological crisis they have caused, Professor Gal Gulbrandsen in his book, Poverty in the Midst of Plenty, notes; ‘What is intriguing about this economic process is how little it has been subjected to public debate in Botswana, despite the fact that land deterioration is a prevailing problem throughout the country.
The political silence about this issue parallels quite strikingly the non-politicized character of the increasing economic polarization, to which it is, of course, a corollary’. In other words, it is surprising that there are no political upheavals to protest this continuing concentration of the country’s wealth in fewer and fewer hands. The richest 20% of the population commands 70% of national income while the poorest receive only 2.2% of national income.
Budgetary priorities are topsy-turvy and thoroughly confused. For reasons best known to this military junta masquerading as a democracy, the BDF is given top priority in the allocation of the development budget. If a survey were to be carried out on priority problems of this country it is highly unlikely that 1% of the population would mention the BDF. The Minister deliberately omits to tell us that the massive BDF budget of P3.59 billion is accounted for by the purchase of expensive jets which are irrelevant to the defense needs of the country. While the regime splashes out on expensive military toys like jets school children in places like Baoatlaname literally faint because of hunger. The security Batswana really need is social security, security against hunger, thirst, ignorance, poverty, disease, arbitrary power and exploitation, and not military security. That the BDF budget is always cloaked in secrecy for ‘security’ reasons is a recipe for corruption and financial malfeasance.
The BNF will radically review defense expenditure and reduce it significantly so that the country can enjoy the peace dividend occasioned by the advent of independence in South Africa in 1994. As far as the BNF is concerned, ‘the defense of the country can be best carried out most efficiently and less expensively by training all able bodied citizens to defend their motherland’ with a highly mobile BDF ground force only serving as the core of the ‘Citizen Force.’ The BNF ‘will not establish an expensive and financially unsustainable Air Force of Jet Fighters and bomber squadrons’.
As Jack Parson reminds us, the huge development budget on the non-productive BDF is particularly ill-advised because ‘today’s development expenditure is tomorrow’s line item in the ministerial budget’. Once an undesirable pattern of expenditure is established it becomes difficult to break down because of vested interests and the country gets locked in ‘an incrementalist net’. Hence the absolute importance of scrutinizing new items on the development budget which may drain the resources of the country through huge recurrent budgetary allocations in future.
From the point of view of the BNF, the economic sectors that are central to the attainment of our genuine economic independence are manufacturing industries, commerce, agriculture and tourism. All of these sectors of the economy never feature prominently in the order of priorities of the BDP regime. The revival of agriculture on the basis of irrigation is not only critical for food self-sufficiency, but also for the supply of raw materials to manufacturing industries, which in turn would supply finished products to agriculture. Unless the neo-colonial structure of the economy is changed and we cease to be a monocultural raw material appendage of the global capitalist economy and create forward and backward linkages between the mining, tourism, agricultural and manufacturing sectors the employment goals the regime set out to achieve ring hollow.
The development of consumer and capital goods industries would put an end to our economic dependence on other countries. The old Japanese adage that ‘no country gets rich by selling raw materials’ is instructive. While the Minister expressed rhetorical commitment to employment creation mining companies were planning massive retrenchment of workers. The laws of this country make it far too easy for capitalists to lay-off workers. We must borrow a leaf from the Cuban experience by ensuring that during periods of involuntary separation from work, employers must be compelled by law to continue paying workers, provide retraining of those workers and help in finding other employment for them.
The BNF also differs fundamentally from the BDP regime in terms of how manufacturing and agricultural industries should be developed. As a socialist-oriented political organization the BNF believes that it is critically important for the ordinary people, the workers and peasants, to be in the forefront of wealth generation and distribution. The BNF Social Democratic Programme asserts that the development of these key sectors of the economy must not permit the concentration of wealth in the hands of few people, be they foreign or local capitalists, resulting in ‘a business oligarchy’ that usurps the democratic control of the nation’s wealth and resources from the working class. That is why the BNF places a high premium on public ownership of the basic means of production through the establishment of various organically linked cooperatives and the expansion of the public sector alongside a regulated market economy under a selective industrial policy.
The Minister devotes a few lines to so-called ‘human capital development’ and goes on to say that ‘substantial resources will continue to be channeled towards education and training with emphasis on ensuring that the skills and qualifications offered and acquired are more responsive to the needs of the labour market’ (page 12). As far as the BNF is concerned, as long as the BDP regime remains strongly wedded to the ideology of an elitist and white collar-oriented curriculum this goal will remain on the backburner. Rock bottom morale is the hallmark of the civil service that is always given the run round by a President with a predilection for ruling by decree, and in the words of Professor Good, ‘takes decisions by caprice’.
Hence the Minister’s hopes of increased productivity are no more than a forlorn cry. The BNF calls for fundamental transformation of the education sector. In our view, education must bridge the gap between theory and practice, mental and manual labour, urban areas and the rural hinterland. Education with production (EwP) with emphasis on technological competence would produce students with relevant skills including self-employment skills.
Each school, particularly at secondary level, must as van Rensburg puts it, ‘be a powerhouse of skill and talent’ in the milieu where it is located.
During its heydays Swaneng Complex under van Rensburg promoted the development of the village in various ways. It gave birth to Serowe Engineering, the first cooperative in the country (in Serowe), Tshwaragano Hotel, Mmegi newspaper, a printing and publishing facility and the Boiteko project for poverty-stricken women who were taught various skills of making earthen pots and knitting blankets. Swaneng students built their own laboratories and went on to build primary schools in Molepolole and Shashe River School during holidays, applying the skills they had acquired in their classrooms.
Imagine the number of jobs that would be created if all secondary schools were founded on the philosophy of education with production (EwP) with emphasis on technological competence. Each school cycle at JC and Form Five levels must be simultaneously preparatory and autonomous i.e. it must prepare the child for the next level, but in the event that this is not possible it must serve as an autonomous unit that equips the child with self-employment skills and competences. In industries this policy translates into work-based training used by Germany to reduce youth unemployment to a bare minimum.
On several pages (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) the minister laments the effects of the periodic global capitalist crisis which stems from the unplanned and anarchic nature of capitalist production. In the wake of the neo-liberal counter-revolution these periodic crises have become more frequent and much more deeper and devastating for third world countries. In some aspects of the speech figures are rotted out as if the budget is about things and not real human beings. Virtually all budget speeches lament this ruinous crisis of capitalist over-production without offering any solution.
While there is no disputing the fact that the free trade version of the World Trade Organization (WTO) is inimical to the aspirations of most developing countries, and that its governance mechanism is undemocratic and benefits advanced capitalist countries, it is wrong to assume that WTO rules and regulations are immutable and cast in stone. Chang and Grable argue that WTO rules can be actively interpreted through dispute settlement panels if developing countries act collectively. Acting in concert third world countries can rewrite some of the rules and render them more amenable to interventionist trade policies. There are types of subsidies that are permissible or ‘non-actionable’ under WTO such as subsidies for basic research and development (R&D). (continues next week)
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