10 April 2008
Gaborone — Two University of Botswana (UB) lecturers, Dr Dolly Ntseane of the Social Work department, and Dr Kholisani Solo of the Law department, recently launched a book they co-authored, titled, Social Security and Social Protection in Botswana.
The book serves to justify the need for a proper comprehensive, accessible, integrated and inclusive Social Security Policy in Botswana as well as to be a policy, which will protect the lives and ensure greater welfare of Batswana. The book uses a policy analysis approach, which emphasizes the need to understand social security from a social, economic, political, and legal perspective.
The chapters of the book cover benefits for vulnerable populations such as children, women, the elderly, people living with HIV/AIDS and remote area dwellers. Specific attention is focused on social assistance, social insurance and social allowance scheme, as well as an extensive review of international instruments that have direct link to social security provision. Throughout the book, the authors emphasize the need for government to develop a social security regime that embraces the principle of prevention, integration, solidarity, redistribution and rehabilitation. The authors, Dr Ntseane and Dr Solo, are both members of a regional group of experts known as "SADC CORE GROUP of Social Security Experts", who are involved in the reform of social security in the region. This group has been instrumental in the formulation of the SADC CODE on Social Security, which was formally adopted by the SADC Integrated Committee of Ministers in June 2007.
Here at home, Ntseane and Solo belong to the "Task Group on Social Security" formed as part of an initiative supported by FES Botswana (Friedrich Ebert Stiftung), to advocate for an inclusive Social Security Policy.
In his preface, Marc Meinardus, the former resident representative of the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, says for the first time there is a publication, which documents experiences, knowledge of social security policies, laws and systems in Botswana, as they exist to date. He lauds the book as providing comprehensive information for all experts and practitioners in the fields of social security in Botswana, and which may serve as a textbook for students as well as a teaching aid in courses on the subject matter.
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