<div class="blog_like_buttons1"><span style="height:20px;width:90px"></span> </div>May Day and pro-labour Umbrella policies-Part 2
<br><span class="content_bodytext_para"><br>Chronic food insufficiency blights the lives of 24 percent of the population.
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<span class="content_bodytext">In
2006 the International Food Policy Research Institute's Global Hunger
Index concluded that Botswana has a serious hunger crisis which has
worsened over a period of ten years when the country experienced
economic growth.
<p>These social ills are compounded by declining public spending
vis-a-vis escalating defense expenditure. Although the security our
people real need is social security - security against hunger, poverty,
disease, arbitrary power and exploitation, and not military security,
the country's defense expenditure of three percent of the GDP is the
second highest in the SADC region after South Africa - having escalated
up to seven percent of the GDP around 2007. Between 1990 and 2002
education expenditure as a percentage of GDP declined from 6.2 percent
to 2.2 percent, health expenditure stagnated at 3.7 while defense
expenditure remained as high as 4.1 percent.</p>
<p>It is against this backdrop that the four opposition parties adopted a
progressive Social Democratic Programme in October 2011 whose main
thrust supports the minimum social demands of the workers and poor
peasants. For instance, the adoption of producer and consumer
agricultural cooperatives and housing cooperatives will benefit and
empower the working class.</p>
<p>The programme explicitly rejects the BDP's commitment to a
neo-liberal minimalist state and asserts the principle of a
developmental/interventionist 'people-centred' state.</p>
<p>The radical inequalities alluded to above can only be addressed by a
state that deliberately intervenes in the economy on behalf of the
oppressed. In this vein, the Umbrella policies reject the BDP's
privatization juggernaut into every sphere of our lives including the
selling off parastatals or public enterprises to the private sector with
its concomitant scourge of laying off thousands of workers. In the
words of the BMD, the Umbrella programme undertakes to 'optimize and
promote public enterprises' to render these 'national assets' more
efficient and save jobs.</p>
<p>In its totality the Umbrella programme can be characterized as a
democratic developmental state. Contrary to the ideology of
globalization historically of all successful industrializations have
relied on a strong state, but the later the industrialization, the
greater the need for stronger state intervention in the economy. </p>
<p>Hence the decision by the Umbrella United Front to pursue a selective
industrial policy which entails the identification and promotion of key
strategic industries in areas such as mining, food production,
transport and medicine and to prioritize the establishment of
manufacturing industries with forward and backward linkages that will
maximize skills development and employment creation.</p>
<p>If India which is not a major diamond producer employs a million
people in that industry, it stands to reason that under visionary
leadership Botswana as a leading producer of diamonds should be able to
employ all its people in this single industry. </p>
<p>In the manufacturing diamond industries in countries like Canada,
most entry level and general administrative jobs as well technical and
skilled jobs such as boilers, materials clerks, office clerks, bruters,
diamond polishers, laser operators, diamond sorters, diamond graders,
scaif/polishing wheel operators, automatic machine setters etc require
Form V with basic math, physics, basic computer skills, good reading
and writing skills. Secondary diamond industries would go a long way in
combating youth unemployment in this country. Entry requirements for
most supervisory and professional jobs in the manufacturing of diamonds
are a first degree or college certificate and this would help arrest the
growing problem of the educated unemployed. Secondary diamond
industries would stimulate a range of tertiary industries creating
further employment. Under the BDP regime, these jobs are exported to
countries like Belgium and Israel while our youth are roaming the
streets without jobs. The Umbrella United Front adopted a range of
policies designed to improve the material living conditions of workers,
including the right to unionize and engage in collective bargaining
which will be facilitated by the adoption of a policy requiring
'companies to disclose information' on their profit levels 'for purposes
of collective bargaining'. For 44 years (1966 - 2010) the BDP regime
denied public servants the right to unionize by refusing to sign ILO
Convention No. 151. The Umbrella government will 'sign and domesticate
all internationally accepted labour conventions'.</p>
<p>Bolstered by their new trade union status public sector workers
embarked on a historic strike in 2011 demanding a 16 percent hike in
their wages. Under the BDP regime members of the 'disciplined forces'
are voiceless. Umbrella policies call for the right of 'members of the
disciplined forces' to form 'associations'. In addition to the ILO
conventions, the Umbrella government will sign and ratify the UN
International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which
the BDP regime failed to sign. Many of rights denied workers are
covered in that covenant.</p>
<p>Umbrella policies commit themselves the establishment of 'a
tripartite labour forum' made up of trade unions, employers and
government to improve the living standards of workers by determining a
statutory living wage and maximizing employment creation.</p>
<p>This forum will accord workers decision-making powers to influence
national economic and social policies adopted by government. Many
European countries attribute the success and gains in workers living
standards to the tripartite tradition. In Austria they are referred to
as the 'Social Partnership', in Belgium they have the 'central economic
council', in Portugal they are called the 'economic and social pact'
while Finland and other Scandinavian countries have had a long-standing
tripartite tradition.</p>
<p>Umbrella policies address the need to 'foster empowerment of citizen
employees, through labour laws, collective bargaining etc and the
localization of positions that are in the hands of expatriates'. The
localization policy will put an end to the neo-colonial two-tier salary
structure of the BDP regime which has been handsomely paying expatriates
possessing the same qualifications and performing the same jobs as
their Batswana counterparts salaries that are three times higher than
what locals are paid since 1966.</p>
<p>The simple principle propounded by the 1948 UN Declaration on Human
Rights article 23 (2) that 'Everyone, without discrimination, has the
right to equal pay for equal work' and the 1951 ILO Convention No.
100, the Equal Remuneration Convention, which asserts 'the principle of
equal remuneration for men and women for work of equal value' will be
implemented by the Umbrella government for first time in this country.</p>
<p>In sharp contrast to the BDP regime's commoditization and
privatization of education the Umbrella programme commits itself to the
principle of the right to education which will be compulsory from 'early
childhood to form V'.</p>
<p>Under the BDP early childhood education is privilege of the rich who
can afford the ever-escalating prohibitive fees which serve to widen the
gap between the rich and poor, while under the Umbrella government all
children will enjoy the right to early childhood education.</p>
<p>Allied to this policy is a commitment to the progressive principle of
Education with Production (EwP) which will bridge the BDP's artificial
gap between theory and practice and put an end to the current elitist,
bookish and white-collar oriented system of education.</p>
<p>It is in the best interest of the working class to bridge the gap
between theory and practice and make education more accessible to all -
replacing the system wastage of the current conventional system of
education which is an expensive way of educating an elite at the
expense of the vast majority who are thrown by the wayside as
'drop-outs' every year. The scourge of so-called dropouts has assumed
frightening proportions with the number of degree holders roaming the
streets increasing every year as Ronald Dore's classical case of the
'Diploma Disease' wreaks havoc in Botswana.</p>
<p>'Affirmative action policy to education for previously disadvantaged
communities' will put an end to the BDP regime's one-size-fits-all
curriculum which in the case of the ethnically distinct Basarwa
communities amounts to assimilation into the cultures of the dominant
Tswana ethic communities. The language ecology of this country
continues to be dominated by English - the overrated language of our
former colonial masters. On the hierarchy of languages English is at
the top followed by Setswana, subordinated to English, and then all
other languages receive no official recognition. They are neither used
in schools nor in the public domain.</p>
<p><b>The language policy in schools is outdated and ineffective as it is
informed by research on bilingualism conducted during the pre-1950s
period which wrongly assumes that subtractive bilingualism or early
immersion in the dominant language, in this instance, English, 'will
improve performance'. In line with the 1953 UNESCO Declaration that 'it
is axiomatic that the best medium for teaching a child is his (sic)
mother tongue' the Umbrella policy of conducting 'instruction in mother
tongue at pre-primary school and primary school' will benefit non-Sotho
Tswana minorities for whom Setswana and English are second and third
languages respectively. This policy has severely compromised their
academic achievement in school. </b></p>
<p>The BDP regime finally relented to persistent pressure from the BNF
and trade unions by instituting a rudimentary social security system
including the old age pension scheme but today neo-liberal public sector
reforms threaten to undo this modest achievement. Umbrella policies
commit themselves to the revival of the Keynesian-style welfare state
because it constitutes the workers' 'social wage'. Neo-liberal
globalisation is reducing them to arenas for capitalist greed and
profit-making.</p>
<p>The welfare state is a product of mass struggles and social reforms
that were instituted in the aftermath of the Great Depression of the
1930s and the two imperialist wars euphemistically called 'World Wars'
in the advanced capitalist countries. The comprehensive Umbrella social
security system includes unemployment benefits for the unemployed, a
'review of old age pension scheme', 'a policy of inclusivity for the
people with disabilities, disadvantaged individuals and groups', the
right to work, the right to education, the right to housing and the
right to health. On health, Umbrella policies embrace the Alma Ata
Declaration whose major highlights are the primary role of the state in
the delivery of health services and the right to housing. In the
unlikely event that the BDP regime ruling this country for another 50
years it can never sort out the housing crisis into which it has
entangled itself.</p>
<p>The vast majority our people live in substandard housing while the
rich and powerful rake in handsome profits through rentals and land
racketeering out of this basic right without the obligation of paying
tax. Progressive Umbrella gender policies include combating 'the
patriarchal ideology' - the root of gender oppression and disparities.
It also asserts the principle of 'affirmative action' for the oppressed
by developing 'a gender public education programme'. This will go a long
way towards addressing this intractable structural problem. Pursued to
its logical conclusion the Umbrella policy of 'reviewing the electoral
system to ensure broader representation' should enhance democratic
participation of working class women and oppressed minority ethnic
communities through an electoral system democratized along the lines of
proportional representation. For these reasons, the Umbrella government
is the workers' best bet. <br></p><p><a href="http://www.mmegi.bw/index.php?sid=10&aid=163&dir=2012/May/Friday11">http://www.mmegi.bw/index.php?sid=10&aid=163&dir=2012/May/Friday11</a><br></p><p><br></p>
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