Africa-Press – Botswana. When urgency is parked in politeness and those with solutions are left suspended in administrative limbo, the system is not just failing but is choosing to fail. But Pending is not a place but a habit. And habits can – and must – be broken
Special Correspondent
Welcome to the Republic of Pending, the only nation where time stands still and policy is permanently in purgatory. Here in Pending, we don’t govern – we defer.
Our national anthem is a soft, uncertain hum that ends with the words, “… to be confirmed.” The flag bears a single symbol: a spinning hourglass loading icon. It waves proudly over the Ministry of Maybe, the Department of Drafts, and the Secretariat of Shrugs.
Pending’s greatest export? Delays. Our GDP (Gross Delay Product) is the highest in the hemisphere. Productivity is measured not in output but in the number of committees formed to revisit the terms of reference for future stakeholder consultations. We have mastered the ancient bureaucratic martial art of “Park-kwondo” where every bold idea is kicked swiftly into the long grass.
Here, national development plans are like horoscopes – vaguely promising, never delivered. Our ruling party, Forward Later, campaigns on a platform of bold intentions and governs on a foundation of sticky notes and circular memos. Parliament passed the “Urgent Priorities Bill” in 2017. It is still awaiting the final comma.
Need infrastructure? Just file a Request for Further Feasibility Study. Want education reform? Please await the fourth draft of the third review of the white paper of the interim framework. Healthcare? We’re piloting a pilot to consider piloting improvements. Some say Pending is stuck. But that’s unfair. We are moving – just in loops.
Leadership here isn’t about results; it’s about optics. We launch things. We ribbon-cut. We cut the first sod, and most importantly, we photograph. Then we quietly un-launch the project and cut its funding. It’s not about fixing problems but is about announcing that you plan to one day fix problems, once the stars align, the consultants are done, and Mercury is no longer in retrograde.
To govern Pending is to play the national sport: Kick-the-Can. It’s a thrilling game where every official competes to see who can avoid responsibility the longest. Winners are rewarded with extended tenures. Losers are promoted sideways.
And the citizens? Oh, they’ve learned. They build their own bridges. They fix their own boreholes. They govern themselves – while the government ponders whether to approve a task force to assess whether they should approve what-ever it is that needs approving.
In Pending, decision avoidance is a finely honed craft, elevated to a performance art. Masters of the trade can speak for hours without committing to a single course of action, using phrases like, “noted,” “under consideration,” and the classic, “we are working on it.” Here, the key performance indicator of leadership is clear: whoever has the tallest stack in their pending tray wins. Bonus points if it’s colour-coded, rubber-banded, and still marked “urgent” from 2014.
So if you’re tired of action, allergic to urgency, and find the phrase “further deliberation required” oddly comforting, come to Pending. But do bring a chair. While the practice of Pending once offered a form of cautious, steady governance – tempering ambition with prudence during the diamond-rich decades of Botswana’s early prosperity – its continued dominance today is nothing short of suicidal.
The world has changed: diamond funding is in permanent decline, climate shocks, economic diversification imperatives, digital disruption, and a restless, youthful population demand urgency, agility, and bold execution. But Pending clings to its outdated rituals, mistaking inertia for stability. What was once a shield is now a straitjacket.
Diagnosing Pending through Systems Thinking
Enough of the satire. The Republic of Pending is not merely a collection of slow-moving departments – it is a system wired for inaction. Decisions stall not because individuals are uniquely indecisive but because the system rewards caution over courage, hierarchy over innovation, and process over purpose. Feedback loops are broken or ignored. Accountability is vertical, information flows horizontal (at best), and incentives are skewed towards survival, not service.
Root causes include: Overcentralised decision-making where every step requires clearance from “upstairs”- even when “upstairs” is a ghost office. Organisational inertia, sustained by lifetime appointments, weak performance metrics, and reverence for institutional memory over institutional purpose. A culture of avoidance where failure is feared more than irrelevance, and where “not now” is safer than “let’s try.”
Solutions must include a shift from pending to performing and requires more than policy tweaks – it demands a systemic transformation: Radical Reorganisation that flattens bloated hierarchies. Create agile, cross-functional teams that are empowered to act – and be held to account. Ministries need fewer silos and more missions.
Purge the Pending Culture by conducting a bold leadership audit. Retire the masters of procrastination and the PhDs in pending science who specialise in delaying progress with elegant memos. Promote doers, not delayers. Institutional memory is useful – unless it only remembers how not to change. Build Systems of Accountability using real-time dashboards, transparent KPIs, and public service performance compacts will shift the incentives.
Let civil servants see not just what they are doing but what they are achieving. Deadlines must be sacred. Vitally, rewire feedback loops though enabling communities, businesses, and citizens to provide structured feedback that directly informs decisions. Build data systems that don’t just report but react.
Furthermore, train for agility, not administration; instead of workshops on ‘compliance and procedure,’ invest in training public servants on adaptive leadership, rapid policy iteration, and problem-solving under uncertainty. Public service should be a calling, not a comfort zone.
Digitise and decentralise that should harness technology to cut through paper queues and move services online. But go further: devolve decision-making to where problems live – on the ground.
In the past, Pending gave Botswana a reputation for calm governance and cautious prosperity. But today, that same system is fast becoming a liability. The diamond era is ending; the climate is shifting; the youth are watching. And assuredly not pending their deliberations.
Epilogue from the Land of “We Will Get Back to You”
What inspired this reflection? A real-world walk through the corridors of Pending. Weeks ago, I was approached by none other than the Principal Private Secretary to the President – yes, the inner sanctum itself – to discuss the urgent national concern of poor project delivery. The call was serious, purposeful and flattering. A follow-up was promised “shortly.” That shortly now echoes into the void.
In parallel, a Permanent Secretary from a key line ministry declared, with admirable certainty, that I would be engaged to advise the Honourable Minister himself. All that remained was for the Director of HR to sort out the terms. But as is tradition in Pending, one official went abroad, the other fell ill, and the file presumably joined the pending tray – somewhere between a paperweight and a coffee ring.
This is not tragedy. It is farce. And it is national sabotage dressed in bureaucratic courtesy. When urgency is parked in politeness, when action is diluted by ceremony, and when those with solutions are left suspended in administrative limbo, then the system is not just failing but is choosing to fail.
Let’s not pretend that Botswana can afford this any more. Pending is not a place. It is a habit. And habits can – and must – be broken.
We have mastered the ancient bureaucratic martial art of “Park-kwondo” where every bold idea is kicked swiftly into the long grass.
Source: Botswana Gazette
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