07 Mar 2022

Oreeditse Marakakgoro is headed to her first Olympics, and as Botswana’s very first woman Olympics Chef de Mission: she will lead Team Botswana as it takes on the world at the Paris 2024 Olympics. 

It is a role that carries a great deal of responsibility and normally given to well-respected national sportspersons. 

In this role she is the team’s advocate, spokesperson, mentor, confidante, counsellor, and lead cheerleader and anything that she must be that can make the team win. 

Oree, as she is affectionately known has, besides being a teacher, a sports curriculum vitae as long as your arm. 

In her junior years, shes played netball. Later she took to coaching the sport, mentoring a number of teams. 

Among those she trained were Botswana’s under-18 and under-20 national teams. 

A Sports Leadership Academy graduate of Anita White Foundation and the University of Chichester, she recently completed Women and Sports Leadership Trainings with Sport Management Agency. 

She has been a resource person in various platforms where she shared her story and empowered young people and women in sports. 

Additionally, she has facilitated important forums including BISA Softball Umpiring Clinic, Botswana Athletics Women’s Commission, and Youth Leadership Forum for Region 5 Gaborone games. 

During the 2017 Netball World Youth Cup, which was held in Gaborone, Botswana Netball Association engaged her as a radio and Television commentator and analyst. 

She acquitted herself admirably. 

Her appointment as Botswana’s Chef De Mission to Paris Olympics is really the cherry on the sundae. 

She is overjoyed at the appointment “I am quite honored. More and more our country is realising our potential as women,” she says, even as she hopes to become the first delegation leader to bring home several gold medals. 

Her concern about the need for the country to recognise women, and making them part of the sports ecosystem is not lost to this writer. 

She contends: “Let it be known that women are equally competent and deserve a place at the decision-making table, especially where it concerns them.” 

Surely, she says, her appointment is a pointer to Botswana’s shifting paradigm where gender is concerned. “It’s comforting. Increasingly women are being recognised and appointed to positions of leadership. 

That should not be surprising. Women have been trained, they are well equipped with the right skills to work and produce results. 

It is not about competing with men like most people think, but complementing each other to bring results to the table. 

The world needs both of us at the table,” she says determinedly. 

That indomitable spirit rose in her during the International Working Group (IWG) Conference in Gaborone back in 2018. 

The trainings, she says, yanked her out of her comfort zone and pity partying over women’s exclusion and deposited in her an assertive attitude that saw her entering boardrooms as a decision-maker. 

“I allowed myself to learn and be groomed by the best. 

I got empowered to empower others, hence we started a series of trainings for BISA Women Sport Leaders and during which we empowered young people to chase their dreams.” 

As always bullies came. They tried to abuse her, but she had developed the confidence to deal with them. 

And she triumphed. 

She is saddened, however, by local media’s lack of coverage of excelling sportswomen. 

The media is a very powerful tool, and its support would inspire and motivate a lot of women, she says. She is still hopeful that better things are coming though. 

Women, she says, must never give up. 

“Show up every day, put your abilities and gifts to work, be courageous; commit to the fight for equal opportunity,” she urges. 

However, that must be accompanied by a willingness to learn, to be empowered, she adds. Ends