When 'cattle herders' run BMC

When Dr. Martin Mannathoko left the Botswana Meat Commission (BMC) in 2003, as its Executive Chairman the government took two full years to find his replacement. Mannathoko served an eight-month notice to allow employers to hunt for his replacement. Two years later Dr. Motshudi Raborokgwe was appointed Chief Executive Officer (CEO).

Dr. Mannathoko now thinks that some board members used the two-year gap to create a stranglehold on the control of the abattoir. “I feel pity for my successor and his successor. I think they came in when the stage was already set.” Dr David Falepau who left unceremoniously succeeded Raborokgwe. The latter stated before the same committee how the BMC board ran the organisation. According to Mannathoko, the current mess overwhelming the BMC can only be corrected with a new board of directors.

Mannathoko who was BMC Executive Chairman for ten years (from 1993-2003), is even surprised how most of the members were appointed in the first place. “I know a lot of those characters (Board members). They don’t qualify, they don’t have the integrity and they don’t deserve to be in that board,” said the former BMC chief adding that he was shocked to learn that somebody he knew as a cattle herder is sitting on the BMC board.

Mannathoko was testifying before the Special Select Committee of Parliament conducting an inquiry into the Botswana Meat Commission (BMC) and the decline of the country’s beef industry. “You cannot correct the situation with the current Board,” he stated, further noting that nowadays one has to be white to be included in the BMC Board. Mannathoko, who is now a businessman, painted a bleak future about the loss making meat commission saying it is shocking to note that the institution has moved from being the best in the world to the bottom of the pack. “We are all shocked and disappointed,” he said.

Mannathoko also dismissed calls by the Gantsi farmers for an abattoir in their region. According to him the Gantsi region has big farmers with a small cattle population. He said the cattle in Gantsi are just a third of those in Ngamiland and also cannot make 7 percent of the national herd. “They don’t even produce the best breed, so an abattoir there will not be viable.” On the subsidiaries which were formed by the BMC with the aim of marketing Botswana beef outside the country, he said he was disappointed that some of them have been liquidated while some are on the process of being liquidated. He argued that BMC should try by all means to keep these companies. “There are crooks in the meat industry.

The meat industry is dirty,” he said, and for this reason BMC should be selling its own beef and not through agents. Mannathoko said the feedlot system which was introduced during his tenure is a good idea but he criticised the way it is being run, saying some white farmers and some officials of the Ministry of Agriculture want to copy what is being done is South Africa by keeping animals in feedlots for very long times. “Some white farmers and some in the ministry think South Africa is the best in the world,” he said, adding that Botswana cannot imitate South Africa because the latter are doing a completely different thing.