Delusions Dis-Illusions
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David Magang’s latest literary offering reprises his earlier Magic
Delusions of Grandeur is David Magang’s second plunge into the literary collosseum. The first, his biographical sketch – titled The Magic of Perseverance – came off the presses in 2008.
The two works are uncannily similar, which in itself is not odd anyway coming as they do from the pen of the same, punctilious chronicler. Both are meticulous and encyclopaedic in their vista. Both are eloquent and riveting. Both are frank and forthright. Both are rousing and provocative in a positive way.
Both are classics no doubt. They are sui generis.
Delusions of Grandeur is venturesome. Through it, Magang, a lawyer by training, treads on not-so-familiar ground notwithstanding his relatively brief stint as the 2iC at the Exchequer. Indeed, he makes a point of underlining from the very outset that he is not a Keith Jefferis, Roman Grynberg, or Brothers Malema. He is simply a commentator.
Well, if he is a mere discussant, then he is of a special breed. Ordinarily lay people do not engage a specialised subject and argue with such a flourish. If any faculty of economics anywhere endorsed the book as standard text for a development economics course on Botswana, they would not be going beyond the pale.
Magang is good at a whole host of things but more so at laying insuperable markers. In The Magic of Perseverance, he set a benchmark that is yet to be bettered, let alone equalled, on the domestic literary scene. In Delusions of Grandeur, he has scaled another height which is every bit non pareil. Economists must be scratching their heads and wracking their brains as to just how the great Son of Kgabo can be one-upped.
The Universe of Discourse
Essentially, Magang’s bone of contention is that for an economy of its tantalising promise once upon a time, Botswana has grossly under-performed. In bolstering his argument, Magang points to the Asian Tigers, basically, as the archetype.
Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong, South Korea – none had a headstart off the blocks: they began on practically the same economic footing as Botswana. All were anonymous, backwater economies with absolutely nothing to write about. In terms of that popular but questionable economic performance indicator known as GDP, Botswana did in fact pip the four to the post.
It outperformed them by two to three points for 30 straight years or thereabouts. But look at where the Tigers are today. They have long broken into the First World mould whilst Botswana remains stuck in that vast dust bowl dismissively referred to as the Third World. In Delusions of Grandeur, Magang ventures an explanation why, reasoning more from a a posteriori standpoint than a nonchalant a priori posture.
Magang’s thesis is that Botswana would have made greater economic strides but for a malady its economic planners suffer from and which seems to have metastasised throughout the entire bureaucracy. This morbidity, which informs the title of his two-volume tome, he calls delusions of grandeur and fingers it as the cause, fundamentally, of the economic stasis which presently ails the country.
Magang charges that deeply ingrained in the psyche of folk in government structures is an incorrigible and incurable superiority complex that makes them deaf to all common-sense entreaties. It seems to them that Botswana need not emulate best practice from elsewhere on the globe: it is self-contained and as an economy is impregnably fortified. This insularity, this hubris, has the effect that its economic policies are way out of kilter and militate against the symbiosis characteristic of the global economic village that is the world today.
Magang wonders why the policies of various departments of government are scarcely synchronised or concerted, why they seem to work at cross-purposes with each other. For example, he says, one gets the impression that the mandate of the department of labour and migration is to ensure as many spanners as are conceivable are strewn in the way of the Ministry of Trade and Industry.
What seems lost to the people in charge of these ministries, Magang regrets, is that when two such elephants collide, the grass, that is, the investors, suffer untold adversity and to the extent where those who are prospecting are made to think twice about setting up here. Ultimately, the collateral casualty are the citizenry, who are deprived of those potential, vital jobs FDI helps engender, and the Internal Revenue Service we call BURS.
Trading Punches with Fundis
Although Magang explicitly voices the disclaimer that he is no economist, that he does, apparently, with tongue in cheek. In his book, the entrepreneurial colossus does not shrink from lacing up the gloves to slug it out with aficionados in the discipline of economics.
Certainly, cases bound in the book where Magang goes off at a tangent from orthodox economic thought and yet argues so cogently and masterfully that one really has to strain to marshal a viable countervailing argument.
Opining on GDP per capita, for example, Magang contends that as an indicator of the overall economic wellbeing of a nation, it falls far short of a veritable litmus test.
“The implicit assumption of GPD per capita is that the wealth generated by the economy is shared equally within the population when in real life income disparities are of Grand Canyon proportions,” Magang submits, citing a whole phalanx of countries that band about stratospheric GDP per capita numbers but whose people in the main continue to reel from abject and endemic poverty.
On the tread-of-the-mill question of economic diversification, Magang shares the truistical view that Botswana indeed has dismally failed to make a quantum leap on that score. He cautions, however, that the accent on diversification should not be such that it dismisses mining as a spent, inconsequential force. That would be tantamount to throwing the baby together with the water, for given our vast mineral resource endowment, mining will continue to be a significant plank in our economic platform for the foreseable future.
His take is that, “Diversifying away from minerals does not mean relegating mining to the fringes. It simply means an engendering of a multifaceted economic base. We are what we are today thanks to mining anyway. What is fraught with peril is relying on only one industry that is sustained by a non-renewable resource or a set of such in perpetuity and not the industry itself per se.”
Magang does have a point there. Take Australia. It is mining that has underpinned the country’s economic dynamism and resilience for 150 years and it is mining that helped the country weather the ravages of the 2008/09 global economic meltdown literally unscathed. Australia is a reasonably diversified economy but it is not turning its back on mining yet. All this we learn from Magang’s painstakingly researched book and whose copious source notes attest to this rigour.
Curse Did Strike
Granted, Botswana did escape the Resource Curse that has been the bane of many a Third World Country. In other words, its surfeit of resource riches did not boomerang back at the country to turn it into the proverbial basket case. Magang, however, is adamant that Botswana by no means steered clear of the resource curse. It too did incur the resource curse only in its case, the curse took a subtler form – that of the Diamantine Curse.
Magang argues that because the rents emanating from diamond revenues were so prodigious, government became complacent. It became so besotted with its skyscraping cash chest that efforts at economic diversification were not pursued with proportionate vigour.
It explains why when Magang relentlessly belted solo ballads on diamond beneficiation, his colleagues in Cabinet just stopped short of dubbing him a psychopath. Government was so flush with cash mineral resource beneficiation was not deemed imperative.
Years back on the sidelines of some function, Magang recalls, Central Bank Governor Linah Mohohlo angrily lashed out at him “headmaster-style” for passing what she regarded as snide comments on the competence of the monetary authorities. To the consternation of onlookers, the “Empress” wondered aloud where Magang got the temerity to venture into territory of which he was a rank ignoramus.
Reading Delusions of Grandeur, one is apt to wonder whether the venerable custodian of the national fiscus will not be forced into a revised estimate of the man who she so apoplectically laid into. For Delusions of Grandeur is so resoundingly percipient there is no way its author would fit the stereotype of a no-nothing in the field of even monetary economics.
Magang picks off so many illusions about our economy that by the time one finishes reading the book, he or she cannot help marvel at how dis-illusioned they now are. The book is superfragilisticexpialidocious and that is an understatement!
DELUSIONS OF GRANDEUR, 560 pages, is published by Print Media Consult and is available at Exclusive Books, Bala Books, and Books Botswana at P250 per copy.
Digital Version
29 SEPTEMBER 2023 Publication
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News
BMD disapproves homosexuality
The newly elected Botswana Movement for Democracy (BMD) Executive Committee led by Pastor Reverend Thuso Tiego has declared their disapproval of homosexuality saying it is anti-Christianity and Botswana culture.
Speaking at a Media Briefing this past week, BMD President Tiego said Botswana has been a country that respects culture hence endorsing homosexuality will be catastrophic.
“Our young generation grew up being taught about types of families, if homosexuality is passed, at what age will our children be introduced to homosexuality?” he rhetorically asked.
He continued: “If we are going to allow homosexuality then the next day, another person will come and say he wants to practice bestiality. What are we going to do because we have already allowed for this one (homosexuality) and at the end it will be a total mess.” Bestiality is sexual relations between a human being and an animal
This according to Tiego will give those people an opportunity thus disrupting known Botswana beliefs. He however dismissed any notion that the decision to condemn homosexuality should not be linked to the top two of the committee who are men of cloth. “This is a decision by the whole committee which respects the culture of Botswana and it should not be perceived that because we are clergymen we are influencing them, but even if we do, politics and religion are inter-related.”
Of late the church and the human rights organization have been up in arms because of the high court decision to allow for same sex marriages. Ministries ganged up, petitioned parliament and threatened to vote out any legislator who will support the idea. The ruling party, BDP which was to table the amendment in the constitution, ended up deferring it.
BMD President further revealed that he is aware of what really led to the split of the party and he is on course to transform as they approach 2024 elections.
“There are so many factors that led to split of party amongst others being leadership disputes, personal egos and ambitions, toxic factionalism and ideological difference just to mention a few, but we are transforming the party and I am confident that we will do well in the coming elections.
In addition, Tiego is hopeful that they will take the government as they feel it is time to rebrand Botswana politics and bring in fresh blood of leaders.
He further hinted that they are coming with positive transformation as they eye to better the lives of Batswana.
“When we assume government, we promise to be transparent, free and fair electoral processes and encourage pluralism as way of getting back to our roots of being a democratic country as it seems like the current government has forgotten about that important aspect,” Tiego explained.
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North Korea diplomats in suspected illegal ivory trade
Reeling under the increasing barrage of stinging international sanctions, the isolated North Korean regime is reportedly up to its old trickery, this time in a more complicated web of murky operations that have got the authorities of five southern African countries at sixes and sevens as they desperately try to tighten their dragnet around Pyongyang’s spectral network of illicit ivory and rhino horn trade.
It is an intricate network of poaching for elephant tusks and rhino horns that spans Botswana, Mozambique, South Africa and Zimbabwe, with the main sources of the contraband being Botswana and South Africa.
The syndicate running the illegal trafficking of the poached contraband is suspected to be controlled by two shadowy North Korean government operatives with close links to one Han Tae-song, a disgraced North Korean career diplomat who, while serving as the second secretary at his country’s embassy in Harare, Zimbabwe, was expelled in 1992 after he was fingered as the mastermind behind a similar illegal ring that was busted by the country’s authorities.
This disturbing tale of malfeasance by North Korean state actors is as real as it gets.
Recent reports indicate that authorities in the source countries are jointly battling to plug holes created by the shadowy syndicate which allegedly has on its payroll, park rangers, border officials and cross-border truck drivers.
Even more disturbing are allegations that some wildlife officials are conniving in misrepresenting numbers of retrieved rhino horns and ivory from poachers and getting kickbacks for their involvement in the pilfering of ivory and rhino horns from government stockpiles especially in South Africa.
In a shocking and well-orchestrated movie-style heist in South Africa, thieves in June this year made off with 51 rhino horns after breaking into a very secure government stockpile facility of the North West Parks Board (NWPB).
While some suspects from South Africa and Malawi were nabbed in a government sting operation, none of the rhino horns – 14 of which were very large specimens that can fetch serious money on the black market – were recovered.
A report of the heist said the police were lethargic by eight hours in responding to an emergency alert of the robbery which was described by North West police spokesperson Brigadier Sabata Mokgwabone as “… a case of business robbery…”
Thabang Moko, a security analyst in Pretoria says the military precision in the burglary, delays in police response, and failure to recover the stolen rhino horns is dubious. “This development lends credence to suspicions that some government officials could be part of a shadowy syndicate run by foreign buyers of rhino horns and ivory,” Moko says.
It is understood that in light of the rhino horns heist in North West, South Africa’s Minister of Environment, Forestry and Fisheries, Barbara Creecy on 1 August, shared her concerns to her counterparts in Botswana, Zimbabwe and Mozambique calling for greater regional cooperation to combat the illegal wildlife trafficking which she believes is being masterminded by the Far East’s buyers of the ill-gotten horns and ivory.
It is believed that foreign kingpins involved in perpetuating the illegal trade are mainly North Koreans vying against Vietnamese and Cambodian buyers in the quest for dominance of the illicit trade in rhino horns and ivory sourced from southern Africa.
Creecy’s concerns, which she also shared to South Africa’s state-run broadcaster SABC, echoed Moko’s worries that the North West heist may have been an inside job.
According to Creecy, there was a need for the International Criminal Police Organisation (Interpol)’s greater involvement in joint investigations by affected countries as there were indications of ‘local knowledge’ of the North West job and that syndicates, “Higher up the value chain actually recruit park rangers to the illegal ivory trade network.”
Botswana’s Environment and Tourism Minister Philda Kereng is on national record admitting that poaching was a source of headaches to her government, especially considering that the daring poachers were making successful incursions into secure areas protected by the Botswana Defence Force (BDF).
This came after poachers gunned down two white rhinos at the BDF-protected Khama Rhino Sanctuary in August 2022 despite Kereng putting the time frame of the killings between October and November 2022.
Kereng hinted at the existence of Asian controlled syndicates and acknowledged that the surge in poaching in Botswana is driven by the “increased demand for rhino horn on the international market” where in Asia rhino horns are believed to be potent in traditional medicines and for their imagined therapeutic properties.
Botswana has in the past recorded an incident of a group of an all-Asian reconnaissance advance team teams being nabbed by the country’s intelligence service in the Khama Rhino Sanctuary.
Masquerading as tourists, the group, with suspected links to North Korea and China, was discovered to be collecting crucial data for poachers.
Also according to reliable information at hand, an undisclosed number of wildlife parks rangers were arrested between September 2022 and January this year, after information surfaced that they connived in the smuggling of rhino horns and ivory from Botswana.
One of the rangers reportedly admitted getting paid to falsify information on recovered horns and ivory which were smuggled out of the country through its vast and porous eastern border with South Africa, and making their way to their final destination in Mozambique via back roads and farmlands in South Africa and Zimbabwe.
“We are aware that in the past year, some rhino horns and ivory illegally obtained from Botswana through poaching activities and shady deals by some elements within our wildlife and national parks department, have found their way out of the country and end up in Mozambique’s coastal ports for shipment to the Far East,” a Department of Wildlife and National Parks (DWNP) source says.
Independent investigations reveal that two North Korean buyers, one of them only identified as Yi Kang-dae [confirmed to be an intelligence official in the country’s state security apparatus], acting on behalf of the disgraced Han Tae-song, financed the entire operation on two occasions between 2022 and 2023, to move at least 18 rhino horns and 19 elephant tusks from Botswana, including pay-offs – mostly to border patrol and customs officials for safe passage – along the knotty conduit across South Africa’s north western lands, then across south-eastern Zimbabwe into Mozambique.
According to a trusted cross-border transport operator in Zimbabwe, the rhino horns and elephant tusks were illegally handed over to smugglers in Mozambique at an obscure illegal crossing point 15km north of Zimbabwe’s Forbes Border Post in November 2022 and February this year.
The end buyers in Mozambique? “It is quite an embarrassment for us, but we have solid evidence that two North Korean buyers, one of them who is linked to a former notorious diplomat from that country who has been in the past involved in such illegal activities in Zimbabwe, oversaw the loading of rhino horns and ivory onto a China-bound ship from one of our ports,” a top government source in Maputo said before declining to divulge more information citing ongoing investigations.
Yi Kang-dae and his accomplice’s whereabouts are presently unclear to Mozambican authorities whose dragnet reportedly recently netted some key actors of the network. Han Tae-song currently serves as North Korea’s ambassador to the United Nations in Switzerland.
North Korean diplomats have in the past used Mozambique as a final transit point for the shipment of rhino horns to the Far East.
In May 2015, Mozambican authorities nabbed two North Koreans, one of them a Pretoria-based diplomat and political counsellor identified as Pak Chol-jun after they were caught in possession of 4.5kg of rhino horn pieces and US$100,000 cash.
Pak’s accomplice, Kim Jong-su, a Taekwondo instructor also based in South Africa, was fingered as a North Korean spy and returned to North Korea under suspicious circumstances on the heels of Pak’s expulsion from South Africa in November 2016.
A security source in Zimbabwe closely following current developments says there is a big chance that Han Tae-song may have revived the old smuggling network he ran while posted in Zimbabwe in the 90s.
“The biting international sanctions against North Korea in the past decade may have prompted Han to reawaken his network which has been dormant for some time,” the source says. “There is no telling if the shady network is dead now given that Han’s two front men have not been nabbed in Mozambique. More joint vigilance is needed to destroy the operation at the source and at the end of the line.”
North Korean diplomats have, as early as October 1976, been fingered for engaging in illegal activities ranging from possession of and trade in ivory pieces, trade in diamonds and gold, the manufacture and distribution of counterfeit currencies, pharmaceuticals, and the sale on the black market, of a paraphernalia of drugs, cigarettes, alcohol and other trinkets on the back of protracted and biting international sanctions against the reclusive state for its gross human rights abuses against its own people and flagrant nuclear tests.
These illegal activities, according to a US Congressional Research Service (CRS) report, have raked in at least US$500m annually for the Pyongyang regime. Other global studies estimate that North Korea’s illegal earnings from the black market are around $1bn annually, and are being channelled towards the country’s nuclear weapons programme, while ordinary North Koreans continue to die of mass starvation.
In February 2014, Botswana, citing systematic human rights violations, severed ties with North Korea with the former’s president Mokgweetsi Masisi (then vice president) calling North Korea an ‘evil nation’ on 23 September 2016, at a United Nations General Assembly forum in Washington, USA.
Botswana has close to 132,000 elephants, more than any of its four neighbouring countries, namely Angola, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe, according to a 2022 Kavango Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area (KAZA TFCA) Elephant Survey.
The rhino population in Botswana has significantly dwindled, with poaching a leading cause of the decimation of the country’s rhinos. Despite dehorning and relocating its diminishing rhino population from the extensive Okavango Delta to undisclosed sanctuaries, Botswana has since 2018, lost 138 rhinos to poachers.
The sharp spike in rhino poaching in Botswana came after the country’s government made a controversial decision to disarm park rangers in early 2018.
In a statement delivered in November 2022 to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) CoP-19 in Panama, the Botswana government instead blamed the surge in poaching to a shift of foreign-sponsored organised poaching organisations from South Africa to Botswana.
“This increase in rhino poaching in Botswana coincided with a decline of rhino poaching in South Africa from 2018 to 2020, suggesting a displacement of the poaching syndicates from South Africa to Botswana,” the statement reads. “The recent decline in rhino poaching in Botswana (2021 and 2022, relative to 2020) coincides with the increase in rhino poaching in Namibia and South Africa, further suggesting displacement of the poaching syndicates across the sub-region.”
According to the Botswana government, as of 13 November 2022 the country has secreted its shrinking rhinos (only 285 white rhinos and 23 black rhinos) in undisclosed locations within the country’s borders.
South Africa has close to 15,000 rhinos. Between January and June 2022 alone, poachers killed 260 rhinos in South Africa for their horns. The country is home to the majority of Africa’s white rhinos, a species whose existence remains under threat of extinction due to poaching.
The major threat posed by foreign state actors including those from North Korea, to southern Africa’s rhino and elephant population remains grim as the bulk of the rhino horns and elephant tusks reportedly continue finding their way to the Far East, where China is being used as the major distribution centre.