A friend called me to discuss my recent column condemning the so-called Business Licensing Regulations, which seek to “empower” and “enrich” Basotho by banning foreigners from competing against them across 47 business sectors. The column was published under the headline “Those the Gods want to destroy……….”
The friend made a point that made me want to revisit this subject. It buttresses my view that these regulations are not only vacuous. They are also profoundly moronic.
My friend reiterated the obvious point that you don’t create an opportunity for one person by depriving the same opportunity to another. In other words, success cannot be legislated. It cannot be enforced. Otherwise, every Mosotho will be super rich. All it would require is legislation to make every Mosotho a millionaire or billionaire.
The friend also made the point that he really does not believe trade minister, Ntate Mokhethi Shelile, really believes in these regulations. The minister is an intelligent man and a successful businessman in his own right. He knows that these regulations are stupid. But he is being coerced to support them for his own political survival.
Unfortunately, Ntate Shelile would have to bear the consequences of the devastation to be wrought by regulations. Instead of helping his political career, they might ruin it in the end. All those clamouring for their implementation will leave him to his devices. They will accuse him of having implemented them wrongly when mass unemployment ensues. They will give him whatever label will emerge from their inane minds.
But my friend made a more poignant argument that I had not thought about after Idi Amin implemented similar regulations in Uganda in the 1970s. After they were told to leave their businesses to “create opportunities” for Ugandans, the Asians simply left within the 90-day ultimatum they were given by maniac Amin
After settling in the UK, the expelled Asians rebuilt new successful business empires from scratch. I was reminded of an Indian colleague whom I once worked with when I was a correspondent for a UK based media group. She had been a toddler when her parents were expelled by Idi Amin. Years later they had built a successful business which controls one of the UK’s best known hotel chains. In the meantime back in Uganda, in less than a few months, the economy had wholly collapsed. All the businesses of the targeted foreigners, the Ugandans had been allocated had been successfully run into the ground.
The Asians had been. welcomed in Britain and they had immediately started re-establishing themselves. They set up new businesses across various sectors from retail, manufacturing, tourism, industrial products, among others.
While it took a couple of months for the Ugandans who had been given their confiscated businesses to collapse them, most of these Asians prospered in the UK shortly after they landed there. They became millionaires and multi-millionaires in British pounds, not in Ugandan Shillings. I cannot think of any better and eloquent example to buttress the point that you cannot achieve success for a Mosotho by depriving a foreigner of their talent than this one.
By 1979, a few years after he had expelled the Asians, Amin was himself being expelled from his own country by the very Ugandans he had “empowered” with the stolen Asian businesses. With the Ugandan economy in ruins, and virtually all of those seized businesses in the ground, Ugandans turned against their benefactor. Nothing else had been left to ruin. So Amin first landed in Libya, then in Saudi where he died a very lonely man. I don’t envision Ntate Shelile being thrown into exile after his regulations fail. But he will - like Amin – be a lonely man somewhere in the mountains. He would have to shoulder the blame for the failure of something he did not believe in.
So to all the foreigners who are being expelled in the 47 business sectors “reserved for Basotho”, I say don’t lose hope. Don’t even beg to remain here. Learn from the Asians who were expelled from Uganda and take your business acumen elsewhere where it is wanted and welcomed. The same skills that made you succeed in Lesotho will see you succeed wherever you go. And take comfort from the fact that there are many Basotho, including Yours Truly, who don’t support these regulations. Also remember what I said in my article of two weeks back, those the Gods want to destroy, they really first make mad. Don’t wait for this madness. Pack and leave.
The tragedy for Lesotho is that the legislators pushing for these regulations are themselves empty tins. None of them have run anything close to a successful spaza. Yet they wax lyrical about how these regulations will make Basotho “prosperous”. Many of them could never operate a two plus one taxi “business” viably. Not to mention a successful car wash in their own constituencies. All they can do is condemn foreigners for their governance failures.
Minister Shelile had said implementation of the regulations was meant to have started in select districts in September. Can he please give us an update of how they are being implemented. How many foreigners have been expelled from the 47 business sectors in those districts? What is happening to their businesses? Are they being seized Hitler style and getting allocated to Basotho? Ntate Shelile had also suggested the foreigners would be given a timeframe to wind up their businesses. What if there is still excess stock after the winding up period? Will it be confiscated? And what happens to those foreigners who resist? Will they be beheaded? Why were only 47 sectors designated? For Basotho? Are we going to have more sectors being designated? Why not increase the sectors from 47 to more than 100 to match the number of political “parties” in Lesotho. In fact, why not just designate the entire economy to be run by Basotho and exclude all foreigners? Ntate Shelile should consider all these options. Indeed, those the Gods want to destroy, they first make mad……Let’s wait and see.
Ache!!!
