Times Of Swaziland: WHERE DID WE GO WRONG?

WHERE DID WE GO WRONG?
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By vusi Kunene on 06/12/2018 05:06:00


LAST week I mentioned that there is a need to overhaul government’s personnel
for the country to move forward. I still feel that some of the people in
government offices are not going to help the country come out of the economic
crisis despite the positive moves by the prime minister and his Cabinet.
The previous Parliament brought to light the many positives there were in dagga
production. This was opposed because many do not have any idea of manufacturing
the end result of the product to be produced. We are always thinking of abuse of
dagga and forget about the other products that would benefit the country.
Currently the focus is on the medical benefit that the plant has and we are
failing to concentrate even on the other products that it has. A story was
published where we were told that someone is producing hair products using the
plant. We have been told that there is a soap that can be produced from dagga.
We have been told that dagga can produce a high quality thread that can bring
into being durable garments. But some government officials did not support the
ideas, yet such ideas are what we need not only to come out of the economic
crisis but to also sustain our economy.
As a country we are failing to fully benefit from our natural resources and
sometimes we even lose what we already have because we are giving away the
natural resources. We have an example in Botswana, which saw an opportunity to
benefit from its natural resources and their currency today is very strong as a
result. Can’t we model Botswana in as far as this is concerned?
Botswana realised that for them to maximise their gains from diamonds, it had to
execute the end results in that country. We have places like Maloma that is
producing coal and the coal is exported as a raw product at very low prices. And
before we know it, the coal is used to produce electricity in neighbouring
countries. We then buy that electricity at high prices.
The Eswatini Electricity Company always tells the nation that it needs to
increase electricity tariffs because it buys electricity from Eskom at a high
price. Eskom is selling to us, at high price, a product from our natural
resources that we sold raw.
It pains me deeply when I think of the iron ore at Ngwenya. The ore was
transported day and night at the expense of our roads. At the end of the day,
emaSwati never benefited from this natural resource.
As I penned this, companies in the country are importing steel products from
other countries at high prices. This is the very steel produced from our iron
ore. With the steel industry it is even worse because government is taxing the
companies yet they are assisting other countries to protect their steel
industries.
South Africa has a steel industry that it is protecting and, therefore, it taxes
steel imported into that country at high rates to protect their industries. What
is Eswatini protecting because it does not have a steel industry? Instead of
allowing the steel to be brought into the country at cheaper rates so that more
emaSwati could be employed and then tax them, we stop the employment
opportunities through high taxes.
This is the same thing with the gold mined at Lufafa. The people of Hhelehhele
do not have good roads yet there is gold that is being mined in their
neighbourhood. That explains why it is not easy to find a person of that area
owning a gold product yet gold is being mined in the area. The mine does not
benefit the community because even the few who are employed are not properly
remunerated to make a difference.
I want to praise government for realising that water is a natural resource that
can be utilised to help in the economic development of the country. This I say
because recently we have seen some dams being constructed.
This is good but I wonder why it does not do the same with the other natural
resources. But even with the dams, the problem is that whenever they are
constructed, we think of nothing else but sugar cane cultivation. Cultivating
sugar cane was quite viable in the past but there are challenges now. Why then
do we not diversify and think of other things to do with the dam water.
Clearly we are heading for a drought year and food scarcity will be common. Why
not utilize the water we have in the dams for big scale production of other
crops. Instead of importing maize, while denying people to get same from other
countries, we could use our water resource and land to produce the food we need.
As long as we have not looked at the people in government offices we will
continue lamenting until we expire. Even the current PM with his plans will not
succeed.