26 Apr 2022

Besides being fun, well-managed festivals, offer a host of economic and social benefits to communities, including bringing people together and instilling some sense of pride and knowledge of the culture.

One such well-organised and successful event was the Madikwe Cultural festival which was held in Mabalane over the weekend.

Officiating at the festival, local government and rural development assistant minister, Mabuse Pule described it as a worthy basis for celebrating and preserving the Bakgatla culture.

“The significance of the event was to bridge the gap between culture, modern lifestyle and heritage of Bakgatla tribe. It was also a crowd puller for tourists who can in turn boost the economy and bring about vibrancy into the district,” said  Pule.

In an interview on the sidelines of the event, Kgatleng District Council chairperson, Daniel Molokwe explained that the Madikwe cultural festival was staged to, in the main, establish and introduce Bakgatla culture to other tribes and Batswana overall.

As such, Molokwe was of the view that it would be important to host the festival every year  to promote small local businesses, including street vendors, who he said would benefit from sales during the event.

Molokwe said the event also served to expose talent in music, artifacts while fashion designers would also get opportunity to showcase their work.

The district commissioner, Kolobetso Sejakgomo was also happy that the cultural festival was a success, hence she was optimistic that it would grow.

“Events such as this one are good for promoting small businesses and as the district leadership, we are available to support you,” Sejakgomo said.

The event organiser, Anthony Rasetshwane thanked Bakgatla and other attendants for supporting the initiative, adding ‘there is room for growth and lessons learnt for this maiden event will be used in future festivals because we intend to host it annually.’ He thus urged Batswana to support the initiative as well as the private sector to sponsor it so that it could grow.

“The event has given us exposure on how to conduct future festivals and we are happy that we managed to deliver on our promises to revellers,” he said.

Meanwhile, culture lovers in record numbers attended the cultural festival and joined Bakgatla in celebrating their culture and tradition through arts, music, traditional attire and traditional cuisine.

Among performing artists were Boshetete, Dr Vom and Ditiro Leero. ENDS