Jayprog

 

During my studies in Botswana I had a chance to do some research on Labour Law Compliance. As an engineering student I did my research on contractors and some government departments that I interacted with during my attachment in various organisations.

 

While laws are enacted to protect citizens at large, if a government fails to make sure that these laws are observed, the purpose of having the laws falls away. The absence of monitoring and enforcement of labour laws has resulted in many companies in Botswana creating their own company rules and that do not comply with labour laws of the country and violate the constitution.

 

I have noticed a disturbing trend in Botswana where the majority of workers are ill-treated by employers and nothing is done by the government to stop this.

 

One problem with the Botswana situation is that the majority of the labour force does not understand basic labour law and this makes them prone to exploitation.

 

One case study that I have done is in the contracting business in Botswana. Many contracting companies violate labour laws at will and they know the system does not work. Getting Labour Justice in Botswana is almost impossible because it takes more than 3 years for a labour dispute to be heard at the industrial court.

 

The initial registration of a dispute to the local Labour office will take 3 months to be heard. This initial hearing in most cases does not yield any meaningful results and most employers will just not attend this hearing resulting in the case being referred to the industrial court. After 5 years of waiting most employees would have moved with their lives and will not attend the court hearing giving the employer a chance to win the case.

 

I have done case studies at Corbett Electrical Pty Ltd an electrical contracting company owned by British nationals. The information that I got from the employees is shocking and I had a chance to follow some of the cases with labour department to reveal the same thing.

 

The above contracting company employees about 250 workers around Botswana most of them at minimum wage and no benefit. The company violates Labour laws regularly and at one moment this was brought to the labour department in 2009/10 but nothing was done against the company. The directors openly declared to their employees that the Botswana government would not do anything to them because they are British and they are employing a lot of people thereby helping the government keep a lot of people off the streets.

 

In 2011 one employee (name supplied and I made a follow up and confirmed the incident with the employee) was physically assaulted by one of the directors after the director allegedly found him seated at the Francistown workshop.

 

The employee reported the case to the police and as usual, the director got away with the case, instead the police blamed the poor young man for annoying the employer. But looking at this case the employer has no right to physically abuse employees.

 

Incidences of verbal and physical abuse have been reported in this company and the labour officers (who did not want to be named) confessed that they can do little about some companies depending on who owns them and they have to balance disputes with employment opportunities that these companies bring to the local people.

 

Chinese and Indian owned companies were not spared in this study. Some cases are political and Labour officers would just ignore them as they do not want to lose their jobs. Another disturbing trend is that the labour officers apply the laws selectively, they look at nationalities and this has a bearing on the case from either employee or employer side.

 

One example is a case involving an engineering consulting company called Systems and Services in which an expatriate engineer from Kenya was not paid his salary for 5 months by the employer. The expatriate employee reported the matter to the labour department but the employer refused to come for mediation. Instead the employer went on to dismiss the employee and told him that he would never win the case against a company owned by a Motswana.

 

Since the employee’s work permit was expiring the following month, the employee had to leave the country voluntarily or face deportation. True as the employer said he expatriate employee lost the case on technical loopholes.

 

In some cases they feel that if the owners are deported it would send a bad message to a friendly nation whose citizens are deported for such behaviour.

 

In conclusion, my study revealed the following;

 

1.      The construction industry has the highest record of labour disputes at the labour offices and the Industrial Court of Botswana.

 

2.      Expatriate employees are at risk of exploitation because of selective application of Labour Laws by labour officers.

 

3.      Batswana employees are exploited by contractors because of ignorance of labour laws and a labour department that is afraid of upsetting the employers.

 

4.      The government of Botswana had no recorded labour disputes for the first quarter of 2011 in Gaborone.

 

5.      Big corporate organisations also have few registered labour disputes because they are worried about their images as businesses and they simply comply with the labour laws.

 

6.      In some cases some corrupt labour officers accept bribes to keep quite.

 

7.      Desperation for a monthly job plays a pivotal role in employees being exploited. Employees are desperate to keep their jobs and they just live with the abuse.

 

8.      Physical and emotional abuse of employees is taking place in Botswana and nothing is being done to address these issues by the labour department.

 

If you have a labour issue that you want me to expose leave a comment and I will investigate and expose and shame the company.

* David & Margaret Lawrence are directors of Corbett Electrical

* Monchusi  owns System and Services Engineers

A lot of people have been fooling themselves thinking that Julias Malema will get away with insulting Khama's government but they got it wrong.

The recent verdict by the ANC disciplinary committee spells doom for the charismatic youth leader and this effectively means the end of Malema's political career. Politics is a dirty game that involves subtle plots.

The president of Botswana has always been a winner locally and internationally and Malema will have to live with this for the greater part of his life after being ejected from the ANC. Politicians use systematic isolation to weaken their opponents.

In Botswana one big loser against Khama is Kgosi Kgafela Kgafela. While he had garnered a lot of support by inciting public rebellion against the government by BaKgatla people form Kgatleng, he has found himself in the same fate as Malema.

As I said Khama always gets his way and that he does without failure. The BaKgatla chief was derecognised by the government and left isolated. The Vice President Mompathi Merafe was tactfully used by President Khama to amortise his opponent, the disrespectful chief of BaKgatla.

Merafe used the typical colonial rulers' strategy of divide and rule. The stupid thing that Batswana have failed to understand over the years is that their constitution is a powerful tool against themselves. The constitution was designed to protect the government not the people as most want to believe.

When Batswana see their president and government officials supporting chiefs and visiting Kgotlas to address them they think the leaders are humble servants of the society who respect traditional values but this is not the case.

Batswana need to know that;

1. The government is above all institutions in Botswana.
2. Although the president of Botswana is not publicly elected, he holds absolute power and can decide to stay in power for as long as he wants by desolving parliament if the MPs start revolting against him.
3. Because MPs want to win the favour of the president, they will do anything to please him.
4. Only disgruntled MPs who are to face the imminent wrath of the president can revolt but they still will face a dead end. typical example are those who formed the BMD recently. If you look at most of them, they knew they were no longer in good books with Khama and they just had to save themselves the embarrassment of being publicly humiliated by Khama.
5. The country is run on blood lines and whatever happens the Seretse and Khama families will always reign in Botswana like it or not. The Khamas and Seretses are the only supreme royal people of Botswana. They always get it their own way.
6. Chiefs are appointed by a government minister and all except Kgafela are on a government monthly salary. This makes it difficult for the chiefs to bite the hand that feeds them. Kgafela is vocal because he does not depend on a government salary but he is not above Khama's government. In modern Botswana chiefs are just ceremonial and they have less power than a constable. The mere fact that people give a chief a standing ovation does not mean that the people are their total subjects at their disposal.

President Khama is rebuilding the BDP and making it a more a powerful party than before. This way Khama will achieve his goal of keeping the Khama family in power. Khama is an ex-soldier, a good strategist infact.

Many opponets of Khama including many opposition leaders like Boko, think Khama is just an uneducated folk who just found himself in power without proper academic credentials. This is not correct, Ian Khama was trained at Sandhurst an elite army school where the likes of Prince William was trained. This is a serious military school that takes only the elite. 

Ian Khama is an excellent pilot and a military strategist who can plan far ahead and think on his toes. He can jiggle many things at the same time.

Whatever happens Ian Khama gets his way anyway.

Wikileaks has become a new IT terrorist and should be stopped before it causes more damage.

While those who do not like the USA find the information juicy, on the other side this information can result in a global catastrophe.

Terrorists now have all the information to target US interests. One thing that Julian Asange misses is that the US is part of a global economy and the release of the diplomatic cables affects the world security at large.

Asange is preoccupied with damaging the image of the US without realising that he is also putting everyone at risk. The recent cable leak giving US strategic locations should not have been published in the first case.

The motive for making the information to the public leaves a lot to be desired and I am tempted to think that Julian Asange works with the terrorist. The release of such secret information surely benefits terrorists not the ordinary man in the street. There is nothing wrong in the US listing strategic points of interest; to me it shows the US is working with other countries hence the locations are all over the world even in China.

The release of these Dipcabs (diplomatic cables) shows that the founder of Wikileaks has lost the plot of transparency. I really wonder if this guy takes a moment to sift through the leaks and say this is not information for public consumption. I would personally be comfortable with leaks that contain human rights abuses by any government, plots of overthrowing other governments and secret nuclear facilities not details of strategic oil pipelines.

The recent leak published by Wikileaks should be proof enough to label Julian Asange a terrorist and issue an international arrest warrant. Julian Asange is endangering the global public safety and there is need to arrest this guy before too many things get out of hand.

When secret information gets into the hands of wrong people, the world can expect anything.