This week was a bit sad to watch. It was deflating to watch how we expended our energy in trying to poke holes into the KKM deal, almost even hoping and praying it’s a scam so it can feed our (very justifiable) hate for SKIK.
And don’t get me wrong, I loathe SKIK just as much as the next man, but if this deal had “gone through” it would have saved lives, and that to me was the only important thing to focus on. (It also wouldn’t have changed how I feel about him. Heck I might have even looked at it as reparations, though nowhere near what he owes us).
But for me, being fully behind #VaccinateBotswanai want vaccines in the country yesterday. And no, the announcements of vaccines arrivals in the past few days don’t make me happy. At all. I will not give MoH (and anyone responsible for this) a pass. As a Motswana who has high expectations of what we need to be as a country, I do not accept excuses of why we weren’t all vaccinated by late April or May like Israel. Google the Israel vaccine rollout and tell me why that wasn’t a story written about Botswana. So I will not accept the excuses we have been given and I will never be happy with the current speed of the rollout.
(PS: I’m not saying Govt should have transferred money to KKM. I’m saying I hope a proper vetting was done in the correct spirit. Because yes, Pfizer will say they don’t have private distributors but they didn’t say the market doesn’t exist. Think about it, with the amount of hoarded vaccines in existence, surely a “second hand” market for these things is eventually going to develop. But obviously bo Pfizer won’t encourage those because that reduces their sales. They want you coming direct to them and they’re happy with other countries having to destroy cos the sale has already been made. Second hand market would mean less money 🤷🏾♂️)
We currently have about 200k people fully vaccinated and with the ones that have arrived we will maybe get to 400k people vaccinated. That’s 25% of our target population of 1.6 million. And if we go by the current speed of the rollout, this will take close to 6 months to get us to where we want. That is desperately too slow. That might mean 6 more months of 40 Batswana dying a day?
So it makes no sense to me how rather than finding ways or praying this KKM thing works, we rather chose to go partisan and work desperately hard to discredit the deal. I do wonder if as a country we truly did our best to explore what KKM was talking about in order to make it work, rather than in order to ensure it doesn’t.
Because what’s the prize when this deals falls flat on its face? A good laugh at SKIK? (who will continue to be a former President, rich, king of Bangwato regardless of how this goes). Beyond that what do we get? The prize is the current rollout by government and Batswana continuing to die.
So when the dust settles from the craziness of the 5 days, I do hope that having put egg on SKIK face will be consolation enough when the calls and texts continue to come of our loved ones dying.
I don’t stand on anyone’s side (especially my King’s). I stand on the side of Batswana getting vaccinated yesterday. And any crook who comes to try and sell me a story, I will definitely hear out and hope for the best, whilst ensuring I do due diligences as best as I can.
