The Presidential ‘Rampeechane’ Rallying Cry: The Political Economy of Covid-19, Anti-Indian Rhetoric and the Discourse of Citizen Economic Empowerment in Botswana

Abstract

The government of Botswana, like other governments worldwide, spent 2020 grappling with the Covid-19
pandemic. As part of the war against the contagion, President Mokgweetsi Masisi of Botswana instituted
a Covid-19 Relief Fund for members of the public, the civil society and the businesses community to
make contributions in cash or kind. However, in early April he launched a broadside against an unnamed
section of the business community for what he said was its unwillingness to contribute to the Fund despite
its members having come to Botswana dirt-poor, and made a massive fortune in the country. Soon a
section of the citizenry pointed an accusing finger at the Indian community as being Masisi’s target. It
was strongly claimed that the Indian community had ‘captured’ the country’s political leadership and in
the process frustrated the government’s longstanding policy of citizen economic empowerment (CEE),
rendering it just a slogan. In other words, what was intended to be the indigenisation of the economy
became its ‘Indianisation’. This paper traces the anti-Indian sentiment to some quarters in the British
colonial government and local tribal leadership before Botswana’s independence in 1966. The impact of the
Covid-19 globally and on Botswana in particular is discussed, after which the focus shifts to the contribution
and different approaches of three relatively young Batswana; Kgosi Ngakaagae, Bissau Gaobakwe and
Atasame ‘ATI’ Molemogi, in the debate on CEE derailment and the Indian ‘othering’ and ‘scapegoating’.
The paper concludes that government’s drive for CEE, which was given the impetus by Covid-19, is likely
to experience severe challenges and therefore have inconsequential impact on meaningful empowerment
of the indigenes owing to the culture of entitlement, poor work ethic, entrenched elite corruption, and ‘state
capture’.