Another country that went the BEE route. A few years after this I went to Gabarone to present at a conference. I went to talk about BEE. I remember that the delegates were VERY unhappy with the organisers, two South African woman. The women went ballistic and were screaming at them. Left me to pull it together. I did. But I learned that Botswana doesn't see race or ethnicity. They see the Batswana as a people, irrespective of race.
I went there at my own expense, stayed at my own expense. The organisers were awful. They disregsrded me completely. However one of the woman arranged for me to go to Namibia to chair a conference. She was amazing. I'd work for her in a heartbeat again - they paid for everything.
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Citizen Economic Empowerment Policy Government Paper NO. 1 of 2012 (CEE Policy0, albeit inadequate, is long overdue. Above the façade, it looks like the government is heeding the call by observers and opposition politicians that government has to come up with a strategy to empower citizens. Critics have argued that notwithstanding rapid economic growth and relative development, foreigners control the country’s economy and Batswana remain in the fringes. Big dams, stadia, roads, power stations and big buildings are constructed by foreign companies, mainly Chinese. Corporate chiefs and managers, according to some studies, are for the most part foreigners and there continues to be income disparities between Batswana and foreigners doing the same jobs. The policy paper doesn’t appear like a concrete thing which government will set into motion the steps in which to obtain meaningful citizen economic empowerment.
Not to be confused with Zambia's Citizens' Economic Empowerment. This is Botswana's - it's been around for quite a while but now it has a fluffy document to describe some of the issues and provide very lfew concrete solutions and measurements. The policy paper can be downloaded here.
This BEE thing is catchy - Bots, Zam, Nam and of course Zimdiginisation (which is a complete joke). And to think that the SA government thinks it's failed - how could BEE be failing if all our neighbours are jumping on the same bandwagon?
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