The Train Has Left the Station

In the boardroom of Botswana Railways on a late July afternoon, the country’s transport minister sat across from the men and women who should keep the trains running.

For the workers and their union, the Botswana Transport and General Workers Union, it was supposed to be a reckoning. What it became instead was a mirror held up to an institution that has been rotting – slowly, systematically, and from the very top.

Three weeks later, the union delivered on its promise. A letter, dense with allegation and anchored in document references, landed on the minister’s desk. It reads less like a labor grievance and more like an indictment: unshared forensic audits, land quietly slipping into private hands, pensioners denied their dues, and an executive class that feeds at the trough while the tracks beneath them buckle.

“The fish rots from the head,” the union’s general secretary, Ora-Keagile, wrote in closing. It is an old proverb. In the context of Botswana Railways, it has never been more literally true.

Audits That Vanished

Begin with what should be the simplest test of institutional integrity: the audit. Botswana Railways commissioned not one but two; a high-level review by the Masitara company and a separate forensic audit. Both were completed. Neither was shared.

In any functioning organization, an audit is a diagnostic tool – uncomfortable, perhaps, but indispensable. When its results vanish into a drawer, it ceases to be a diagnostic and becomes evidence of something else entirely. The union’s letter does not speculate about what those audits contain; it simply demands their release. The silence surrounding them speaks volumes.

This is not an isolated pattern. A special internal audit conducted in 2017 into the procurement of oil absorbent mats from Linvio (Pty) Ltd, a audit that survived long enough to be documented, laid bare systemic rot. The auditors found that P300,720 was paid for 300 mats; only 136 were delivered, leaving mats valued at P164,393 unaccounted for. Total payments to the supplier exceeded P4 million, largely on a sole-source basis. Used mats were procured at prices higher than new ones from alternative suppliers. Procurement files valued at nearly P3 million went missing. The Supply Chain Manager requested quotes, placed the order, and chaired the Quotations Committee – a trifecta of concentrated authority that would make any compliance officer flinch.

That was 2017. The union’s 2026 letter suggests nothing has been fixed. The rot, it seems, was never treated, merely covered.

Land, property, and the quiet privatization of public assets

Botswana Railways sits on a vast portfolio of land; a legacy of its status as a state-owned enterprise carved from colonial rail infrastructure. What the union’s letter alleges is that this portfolio has been treated less as a national asset and more as a private larder.

Consider the inventory: a fully serviced plot near the Lobatse-Gaborone police checkpoint, complete with solar panels, whose disposition is unclear. Private boreholes sunk into railway land, acquired by members of the public through means never explained. Houses renovated at organizational expense and then left to decay at stations across the country; Selebi-Phikwe, Palapye, Dibete, Artesia; like monuments to money wasted. A camp behind the Palapye station, allegedly on BR land, now operating as a private club. The Mahalapye Railway Club, renovated at great cost and now standing as a white elephant with no clear purpose.

And then there is the Block 8 plot, the Rail Park Mall – whose sale reportedly generated P210 million, with a 17 percent residual share whose protection is in question – and the P5 million that disappeared from BR Properties, deemed untraceable.

Each of these, standing alone, might be chalked up to bureaucratic incompetence. Together, they form a pattern: the deliberate bleeding of a public asset into private pockets, one transaction at a time.

The Executive Compensates Itself

While the organization bled, its executives feasted.

The union’s letter details a cascade of benefits that would be generous in a profitable enterprise and are staggering in one that is not. Directors receive subsidised housing and excessive housing allowances. Executive Committee members tool around in leased Avis vehicles; luxury models, some modified at organizational expense, including one fitted with a P60,000 sound system. Botswana Railways owes Avis more than P5 million. Excess mileage charges accumulate. Fuel benefits intended for official use bleed into personal errands. Directors, the union alleges, cash their benefits before their contracts end.

The Avis arrangement alone has become a slow-motion hemorrhage. Executive Board members were provided vehicles before completing their six-month probation. When some were not absorbed after probation; the HR Director and the Director of Engineering are named; the payments to Avis continued anyway. The cars sat. The bills mounted.

Seven trucks were purchased for the Civil Department without motor plans. Within a short period, further funds were needed for maintenance. An Amarok vehicle used by a former BR Legal Advisor who resigned, returned after a year, and purchased the same vehicle, a transaction the union characterizes as questionable. Six vehicles are listed as missing or unaccounted for by registration number: B848 BUX, B338 BUU, B849 BUX, B847 BUX, B341 BUU, B334 BUU. A Jeep and a Prado were disposed of without adequate explanation. This is not compensation. It is looting with a receipt.

The workers who pay the price

For the men and women who actually run the trains, the picture is bleaker still. Salary deductions for loans, pensions, taxes, and rentals are taken from their paychecks – then not remitted on time. Workers have defaulted on obligations through no fault of their own. They have suffered legal action, adverse credit records, denial of financial services. Many have been forced into micro-lending, a debt trap that preys on the desperate.

A court order required Botswana Railways to update the Staff Pension Fund membership premiums by July 31, 2025. As of August 2026, it remains outstanding. Organizational assets are at risk of auction. Retired employees have gone more than twelve months without their pensions; twelve months of waiting for money they earned over decades of service.

The group life insurance scheme is in shambles. Frequent changes of insurers subject employees to mandatory waiting periods. Botswana Railways, having failed to service the policies, is now forced to pay claims from its own depleted coffers. There is no proof, the union says, that all dues are being remitted to claimants. Beneficiaries of deceased employees may not have received their full entitlements. The dead, it seems, are the easiest to shortchange.

There has been no salary increase since 2019. Inflation has not paused. Staff houses are dilapidated; yet rental for employees was raised by 300 percent in 2024, on the apparent promise that the increase would fund renovations. The renovations never came. Proper personal protective equipment was last issued in 2021. Some staff use personal mobile phones to operate trains. The occupational health and safety culture, particularly in Civil Engineering, is described as weak.

A welfare department that once functioned has been allowed to atrophy. Artisans who once had the authority to remove unroadworthy wagons from trains are now instructed to leave them; compromising safety to keep schedules. Employees are in distress and have no effective channel through which to be heard. Access to the Chief General Manager is obstructed.

The tragedy of preventable deaths

The consequences of this institutional decay are not merely financial. They are mortal. The Bonwapitse passenger train accident claimed the lives of two employees. An inquiry produced recommendations. They were never implemented. A subsequent goods-train accident at Phakalane claimed three lives at once. Its recommendations, too, were shelved.

Trains are running with wagons that are not rail-worthy. Loading practices at Sua Pan appear to prioritize trucks over rail wagons, raising integrity concerns. The BR passenger train itself, the union reports, is effectively scrap: copper wiring has been stripped from it, raising urgent questions about the contract with the outsourced security services supposedly guarding BR property. Fuel has been tapped from locomotives parked on station main lines where security is present.

In 2021, all BR fuel depots across stations were contracted to Green Gate Holdings at a cost of P4,672,600.50 to maintain them to required environmental standards. Management now claims it has an agreement with Botswana Oil for the same work. What, exactly, did Green Gate Holdings maintain? Nobody seems to know.

Procurement as a revenue stream for the connected

The union’s letter traces a procurement system that has been weaponized; not to serve the organization, but to enrich a network of connected firms.

The Shadurs company agreement: the government injected P450 million to bail out Botswana Railways, yet the amount received from Shadurs -P30 million – is, as the union tartly observes, insufficient to purchase even a single locomotive. The terms of this arrangement have never been fully disclosed. The Botswana Railways Act establishes the organization as a commercial enterprise with broad contractual powers, but it also imposes a statutory duty to conduct affairs on sound commercial lines and to safeguard public funds. The union is asking, essentially, whether anyone was minding the store.

An ARC company in Mozambique, awarded a tender to repair wagons, was initially given 34 wagons that took a decade to service. Now BR intends to give them more; despite allegations that the company does not meet tender requirements and does not possess a workshop.

Wagons purchased in China were shipped to South Africa for repairs within a short period, raising questions about procurement due diligence, specifications, and whether the original purchase was fit for purpose. BSA wagons crossed the border into South Africa for maintenance; BR was subsequently fined by the South African Revenue Service for failing to declare them. Who authorized the movement without proper procedures or bilateral agreements?

Four BD3 locomotives were sold to Wild Wide Pty Ltd at the lowest prices; and allegedly resold to the Democratic Republic of Congo at higher markups. Eighteen traction motors purchased at R17,000 each were later repaired at a cost of P66,000 each; a repair bill that dwarfs the purchase price. The P2 million Letshego deal. The P9.4 million paid to Petrol Hyper, with some invoices not supplied. Fuel supply contracts with Talakwa, Tswana Fuel, and Petrol Hyper flagged for irregularities.

A near-million-pula payment to a South African company for an Integrated Business Management System for ISO certification covered only the Lobatse-to-Mahalapye section; the remaining stations were never completed. The system did not function as intended. ISO audits continued at further cost. A full independent investigation is requested.

Radios procured for the Operations Department never functioned properly due to calibration issues – a waste of company funds that raises fundamental questions about procurement oversight.

Life Compass (Pty) Ltd failed to attain the minimum qualifying technical score and was disqualified, yet a contract was signed anyway. Ntokoto (Pty) Ltd’s adjudication was incomplete; the matter was referred to the Ministry of Finance because the transaction exhibits Public-Private Partnership characteristics. Guidance under the Public Procurement Act was still pending. Procurement officials were pressured in meetings convened without advance agendas.

An African company was paid the full amount for a BD5 locomotive spares warehouse. The project never materialized. Limited materials delivered sit in the BR stock yard as silent testimony.

Energy Management and Efficiency Specialist (Pty) Ltd was engaged to develop the SHEQ policy, then to audit the system, then to upgrade it at further substantial cost – a consulting trifecta that transforms oversight into a revenue stream.

Security and cleaning tenders have been extended by direct appointment more than three times in violation of procurement laws. The Internal Auditor was improperly recruited. BR Highlander and other social clubs were used, the union alleges, to embezzle funds.

A structure designed to fail

The organizational chart of Botswana Railways, as described by the union, resembles less a hierarchy than a Ponzi scheme for the privileged. The structure is top-heavy with too many Directors, Heads, and Managers – a bloated executive class presiding over a shrinking operational base.

In Business Development, there are too many heads with no subordinates. In Civil Engineering, five Track Masters, three Permanent Way Inspectors, and ten Trainee Track Masters on contract join permanent supervisors for a total of approximately 31 supervisors; an unjustified number given current traffic volumes. In Operations, trained employees take so long to qualify that the organization relies on retired employees on contract, a practice the union believes is deliberate and that retirees effectively purchase these engagements.

Based on the formal submission by the Botswana Transport and General Workers Union to the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure, dated 17 August 2026.

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