Over the recent past too many wrong people have gotten appointed as High Commissioners and Ambassadors. Such misplaced appointments have been going on for a very long time – with despicable consequences.
The appointments are a result of subordinating strategic foreign policy interests to partisan and political patronage by those in charge.
Quite predictably, these wrongful appointments have weakened the foreign service and over time rendered it unfit for purpose.
Membership of the party in power has often mattered more than appropriate qualifications and experience in diplomacy.
The result on Botswana’s foreign service has been a long arc of descent and decline into mediocrity.
For a few years now the foreign service has been too leaden. Experienced cadres have left as their positions have been filled by political appointees who lack depth, intellectual dexterity and have no institutional memory.
However way one looks at it, the foreign service is today hollowed and depleted.
Diplomacy is not an easy job. Yet our leadership has often found nothing wrong appointing their political associates to fill what should be specialized jobs of national strategic importance to the country abroad.
At the moment Botswana’s diplomats abroad are generally unable to play a significant role to service the country’s vital economic interests. This has been the status quo for a while by the way.
They are unable to assist the country in bringing investors here. Additionally, they are generally unable to secure markets for Botswana produced goods.
That is so because a good number of them do not even understand the country’s foreign policy much less the country’s agenda on such key issues like trade.
Botswana’s place on a fast changing world is evolving. Yet many of our diplomats cannot would struggle to even identify Botswana’s station in this world.
To successfully position itself, the country needs a sharp diplomatic service.
Many of these diplomats consider themselves on a long state sponsored holiday abroad.
The global stage is getting not only smaller but also much more complex and sophisticated.
It is a world that needs diplomats who are well versed and well-heeled on international affairs.
Foreign policy should never be regarded as an add-on to Botswana’s overall policy.
It is fundamental. What happens abroad affects government policy at home as we saw on how the tariff regime imposed by the United States had a big impact on Botswana diamonds sales.
The president needs a team he can rely on to guide and brief him – at home and abroad when he tackles international issues.
Working for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs used to be the dream of every young graduate.
As a result the ministry was able to recruit some of the country’s finest and brightest.
That created a very strong ecosystem that was also resilient – at home and abroad – to undertake and see through the country’s foreign policy.
And then a change for the worse started. A big number of political appointees began to find their way into the foreign service as ambassadors and High Commissioners.
Previous BDP governments had created an impression that the slow and somewhat fatalist descent of foreign service into the farce it has become was always inevitable.
The situation took a turn for worse when government saw nothing wrong appointing someone as Ambassador so that they could go and get better medical attention abroad.
Because people were appointed purely as part of patronage, the result was that a tour could last for up to 20 years or longer.
On and on down the slope the quality went.
The current UDC government have inherited a poisoned chalice.
But there is a way out.
They should rollback the dice and get out of the abyss.
A starting point for them is to not buy into the rubbish that our foreign service cannot be brought back to what it used to be – where it served the country’s true strategic interests rather than the leader’s whims.
The current chaos on the foreign policy scene ultimately has a negative impact including on the country’s security ecosystem.
It is time for radical change.
Government should rethink the utility of political appointees as Ambassadors and High Commissioners – especially in key capitals like Pretoria, Washinton, London, Beijing, Geneva, New York, Harare, Windhoek, Lusaka and Brussels.
In the main, political appointees are unavoidable. But they should be always be used sparingly.
A UDC government can still reverse the ongoing decline of the foreign service. And get the diplomatic service back on track.
The underlying paradox is unmistakable. The appetite for political appointments, especially among the political class continues unabated, but across the wider public the demand is for career diplomats to be given a chance.
The public is fed up with political appointments, not least because there is very little to show in value for money in them.
Restoring quality will not be easy, not least because the temptation and now political pressure to appoint party men and woman into foreign service is higher than ever before.
It has not escaped the public imagination that too often, those appointed would be failed politicians, or those that were no longer wanted in their own fields like for example a military general who had fallen out of favour or who the commander in chief wanted to get rid of as a way of making space for their preferred guy.