INTERNATIONAL

Botswana gripped by workers’ strike, student protests

by Farid Omar

With North African-inspired resistance spreading across the continent, Botswana has joined the list of African countries where people are mounting a serious challenge to austerity rule.

Botswana’s civil servants have been on an indefinite strike since April 18 to press their demand for a 16 per cent salary hike. Entering its sixth week, the labour action across the country involves over 100,000 workers in the diamond-rich nation.

In solidarity with teachers and other striking workers, secondary school students in various parts of the country protested in mid-May, demanding that the government sort out the strike so that learning could resume.

Despite using force and firing tear gas, the police were overpowered by the students and forced to flee in all directions. Shaken by the scale of the student protests, the government has ordered all primary and secondary schools closed. The Africa Review reports that the “riots are threatening to balloon into a full-fledged rebellion with more schools joining the protests.”

Essential service workers walked off their jobs, closing the country’s largest hospital and 27 clinics across the country for a period in May.

Unemployment

The government claims of unemployment levels of 7.5 per cent have been challenged by progressive observers who believe unemployment is closer to 40 per cent. Despite its vast diamond wealth, workers in Botswana are increasingly exploited by the pro-West state that has always kept wages low.

Industrial action is not new to Botswana. In 1991, 12,000 public sector workers were sacked after strike action calling for increased wages. Again in 2004, hundreds of workers were sacked over a wage strike at Botswana’s largest diamond-mining company Debswana, jointly owned by the government and DeBeers.

In the current strike, workers have refused to back down to government threats. According to the Africa Review, “Doctors and nurses, who have not been on strike, have adopted the maxim that ‘an injury to one is an injury to all’ and joined the strike after the government announced that it had sacked hundreds of essential service workers who have defied a court order to go back to work.”

While lashing out at the unions for calling a strike during “hard” economic times, Botswana has struck a new $7 billion deal with Mozambique and Zimbabwe to build a deep water port in southern Mozambique and a rail system linking the three countries to take advantage of a regional mining and natural resources exploitation boom.

This bounty for industrial bosses comes at a time when workers in all three southern African nations are reeling from rising inflation, low wages and massive cutbacks to public services.