The Sunday Mail
Being a country boy and having visited Botswana’s capital for the first time since the cradle, I was first intrigued by the bright lights in the city (talk of the “bright lights syndrome”); which reminded me of Dolly Parton’s “perhaps they (bright lights) are extra pretty to a country (boy) like me. Temptation waits at every turn and it won’t let me be. So mama when you pray tonight, say a special prayer for me”.
The song goes on and on, so don’t mind it much.
What you should really mind is what I later Iearnt, that diamonds are the best mutual friend of the two girls, Botswana and Zimbabwe.
Botswana is the largest producer of diamonds by value on planet Earth. Zimbabwe is said to have the largest reserves of diamonds in the world.
While iron is said to sharpen iron, it gives up that might when it comes to the diamond. Diamond simply sharpens diamond!
The relationship between Zimbabwe and Botswana can be understood on the fundamental basis of the above.
Beyond that, the two countries are members of the Southern African Development Community, whose headquarters are in Botswana and whose Chair is our very own President Robert Mugabe.
Both countries are, therefore, inspired by the sacrosanct Sadc objectives, one of which is to “achieve sustainable utilisation of natural resources and effective protection of the environment”.
The wisdom that propels this objective incognito, albeit unwitting to many, is that diamonds don’t belong to the current generation. We actually borrow them from future generations to meet our current needs and, therefore, have the responsibility to leave enough for the generations to come after us.
In utilising the diamonds, we also have to pay particular attention to ensuring we don’t distort the environment to the end that it will be unsafe and unhealthy to the generations to come.
It’s almost like those polite messages that we read in public toilets: “Please leave the toilet in the state you would like to find it in.”
But how come public toilets still stink the most, despite the existence of such polite messages?
Ok, let’s not talk about toilets – we don’t want anybody to lose their hard-earned appetites.
Let’s talk about diamonds.
So, diamonds are Botswana’s number one export, and number five to Zimbabwe. They play a very significant role in the socio-economic transformation of the two countries. What is, however, saddening is that the two countries, despite owning these precious resources in remarkable quantum, don’t have the right to put price tags on them.
They simply carry them to the market, and take whatever ridiculous price the market has to offer on that particular day – which is the total opposite to that wine you import from France, or that watch you import from Switzerland, or that designer suit from Italy.
How can we sustainably manage the resources of future generations when we are condemned to just but price-takers who don’t even know what we are going to sell at come next year? What legacy are we going to leave for the future generations? Dungeons and mine shafts exhausted of all the diamonds there were?
The poverty and inequality levels in Zimbabwe and Botswana also prove that diamonds are still not being optimally utilised for the betterment of the citizenry’s quality of lives.
The World Bank says income inequality is very high in Botswana; while a survey conducted by the Zimbabwe Statistical Agency also established that Zimbabwe’s inequality levels are amongst the worst in the world.
Both countries are still facing fiscal consolidation challenges and have been advised by the International Monetary Fund to reduce the wage bill relative to Gross Domestic Product and broaden the revenue base.
The same pressure that makes diamonds is apparently threatening to destroy some key economic aspects of these two countries. Their state-owned enterprises are still posting losses and these girls’ vulnerability to external shocks is apparently inevitable.
We surely cannot continue like this – living as if we are the last generation on planet earth. In any case, it’s not like there is no solution to this problem. If a mistake is repeated more than once, it becomes a decision. Have we made the decision to live with this problem, and not implement the solution – which is value-addition and beneficiation?
The reason why we can’t write price-tags on the diamonds we sell is that the majority of our diamonds are sold in their raw state. It is also the reason why we get peanuts for selling these raw diamonds and why we also still have unacceptable unemployment rates.
Value-addition is a costly exercise as it requires a lot of money to acquire machinery and training human resources, amongst other costs. This is where these two girls – Zimbabwe and Botswana – need to show that they are not just a bunch of pretty faces – talk of beauty without brains; and brains without beauty, too!
Why can’t these two beauties pool resources together to establish a plant that value-adds our diamonds into finished products? Doing it together will speedy the process of raising the needed funds and ensure adequate funds are raised timeously.
One of Sadc’s objectives, in any case, is to “promote self-sustaining development on the basis of collective self-reliance and the interdependence of Member States”.
There is not even a single need to invent the wheel here; we just need to spin it fast.
The Extraordinary Sadc Summit this month must emphasise the need for concrete partnerships amongst member states endowed with similar resources with a view to accelerating value-addition in the region.
This is the real stuff!
