01 Oct 2024

In a bid to sway votes in their favour, three prospective candidates seeking to claim the Moshupa-Manyana parliamentary seat in next month’s general elections, each dangled a carrot before the electorate in a live Radio Botswana debate on Wednesday, presenting to them a wide array of promises.

While the three candidates from the Botswana Democratic Party (BDP), the Umbrella for Democratic Change (UDC) and the Botswana Congress Party (BCP) generally concurred on the challenges that the constituency is faced with, they each fought hard to stay ahead of the pack, every one of them working hard to convince the voters that he was best suited to chart a brand new course for the area.

Among the promises he made, The BDP prospective parliamentary candidate, Mr Karabo Gare, said once voted into office, he would work hard to inculcate in the people of Moshupa-Manyana the spirit of entrepreneurship.

“In terms of entrepreneurship, this constituency is lagging behind.The number and types of businesses in it, their size and turnover are all indicative of a culture in which entrepreneurship is regarded as not important,” he said.

Instilling a culture of entrepreneurship, he said, would put residents of the constituency in good stead to contribute significantly to both the local and national economy, thereby helping efforts to drive economic growth and diversification.

“The lack of entrepreneurial drive doesn’t affect just the people of Moshupa-Manyana, it is a nation-wide problem. And if changing the (educational) curriculum is what it will take to instil in our people the spirit of entrepreneurship, let us do so,” he said.

Mr Gare attributed the low uptake of government empowerment initiatives in the constituency to this lack of entrepreneurial drive, promising voters that once given a fresh mandate, the BDP government would do its absolute best to reverse the trend.

In yet another promise, Mr Gare said his party would continue to push efforts to create a conducive environment necessary for the private sector to thrive, in an effort to move Botswana’s economy away from being government-led.

He said unlike its private sector-led version, a government-led economy is prone to reacting negatively to economic shocks.

The UDC prospective parliamentary candidate, Mr Moses Loeto, said once in office, he would advocate for the improvement of conditions of service of the health personnel in line with his party’s vision to overhaul the health sector and make it more responsive to people’s needs.

“When we assume power, the exodus of health workers to other countries will stop. We will improve their conditions of service. We will raise their salaries and ensure they are well-matched with those of the countries they keep emigrating to,” he said.

Mr Loeto said employment creation was also among the top priorities that they have set for themselves.

He said their motto ‘Decent Lives; Decent Jobs’, underlined the UDC’s deep-seated commitment to ensure that Batswana have good access to opportunities for decent work that also pays well.

Mr Loeto said he would also ensure that the people of Moshupa-Manyana benefit from natural resources found in their area such as rivers and streams.

“Our natural resources are being plundered by people who shouldn’t be benefiting from them and the BDP government is just sitting and watching,” he said, referring to among a couple of other things the illegal mining of sand in the Moshupa-Manyana constituency.

Mr Pako Monageng of the BCP said his party would revolutionise Botswana’s land management system and ensure that the citizens enjoy better and easier access to land.

One of the wrongs that he said the BCP government would address is the lack of foresight in allocating land, alleging that land authorities at times allocated residential plots in areas suitable for other uses such as agriculture.

“In the Manyana-Mogonye area, we have an area called Seshaba that is rich with a special type of grass that we use to thatch our roundavels, and recently we saw the land board allocating residential plots there,” he said, contesting that such a move threatened the continued existence of the grass species and went against the spirit of environmental preservation.

Mr Monageng said they would also make access to land for residential purposes easier to curb crowding in households.

Further he said once in power, the BCP would make Botswana’s education system accommodative of all tribes, saying in its present state, it was discriminatory.

“We want the mother-tongue instruction in schools to be adopted and practiced in respect to every local language,” he said.

In the end when the three candidates were each granted a moment to make that final plea for votes, Mr Monageng succinctly summed up his plea with, “Re neeleng puso,” assuring the electorate that the BCP is the best party in whose hands they could commit the country’s future.

“Give me a chance to complete what I have started,” Mr Gare closed his remarks, assuring the voters that based on what he had achieved as area Member of Parliament in the past five years, he still had more to offer.

Mr Loeto on the one hand said the UDC would do wonders for Moshupa-Manyana and Botswana as a whole in terms of developments.

“We are going to bring about sustainable developments; developments that ooze life,” he said in summation of his deliberation. ENDS