Building Good Governance from Local Traditions: Botswana’s Former President on Diamonds and the Fight against Corruption

It’s an impressive, almost blinding sight: a big pile of sparkling diamonds, hundreds of precious stones piled up in front of the President as if they were pebbles. The head of state grabs a handful. The glitter reflects in his eyes as he looks at them, millions of dollars worth. 

 No, this is not a shameless act of stealing public assets that we are about to witness. The President in question, Festus Mogae, puts every single diamond back. And the TV reporter who accompanies him even checks his sleeves. No diamond sneaked into it. This is a film-scene that made viewers laugh during a recent event at the World Bank headquarters which premiered the movie “Botswana: The President's Tour”. It is an entertaining documentary, produced by the travel channel, which features Festus Mogae, President of Botswana from 1998 until April 2008. The film highlights Botswana’s natural beauty in an effort to promote tourism and to reduce the country’s dependence on its mining industry.

At the same time it shows Botswana as a modern country with excellent infrastructure and a well performing school system. At independence in 1966 the landlocked country in Southern Africa was one of the continent’s poorest with a largely rural population. Today it is a middle income country in good shape. In WBI’s Worldwide Governance indicators it scores consistently well, especially in the dimensions Control of Corruption and Political Stability.

How did Botswana get there? How did it manage to control corruption and build an effective administration over the years? The visit of the former President has been an opportunity to turn from natural beauty to focus on how the country looks at the governance front.

 “Luck”, said the former President modestly in response to the question what was key to the country’s success story; then he goes on to give insight in how Botswana managed to take ownership of the fight against corruption and building an administration with integrity.

Botswana had a tribal tradition, called kgotla, a democratic process in which the village chief would consult with local villagers who have the right to express their views and concerns. “We realized that some of the modern democratic institutions are versions of our kgotla system”, says Mogae, “therefore, we are adapting our system to institutions like parliament, councils, village committees. So we saw continuity there and we sold it to the people in that sense. We didn’t tell them we are leaving the traditional system for something else but we are modernizing. And everybody accepted it.”

Fighting corruption had always been a priority, because, as the former President puts it, “Corruption can deprive a nation from the prosperity it would otherwise have.”

He explains that it is continuous work in progress and that Botswana had to adapt to the cunning people who always found new ways to circumvent ethics rules. In 1994 the country established a national anti-corruption agency, the Directorate on Corruption and Economic Crime, which not only works on educating the population and raising awareness but also has prosecution powers.

Following a zero tolerance policy, Mogae explains, the anti corruption agency can start an investigation if someone is perceived as living beyond his or her means. “Of course it has to be subtle, because then you begin to impinge on personal freedoms and therefore the courts are there to adjudicate how far the agencies can go and what they may and what they may not do.”

To watch Festus Mogae’s comments on the kgotla system please click the video above.