The trouble with Botswana: A poet speaks :: Mmegi Online

Botswana poet, novelist, historian, short story writer, biographer and human rights advocate, TEEDZANI THAPELO*, argues that the exercise of intellectual life from the polity by the shallow and crises-ridden education system on the one hand, and failure by the BDP and society to negotiate postcolonial modernity properly on the other, have resulted in a cultural vacuum that is a serious threat to our nation and the republican values we so much wish to propel us into the future

What is the greatest trouble with Botswana? No, it’s not corruption, as Chinua Achebe said of Nigeria; no, that’s still largely an elite disease, containable within the very dystopia contours of the peculiar workings of political system itself-specially the rule of law.

The rise of a leftist conscience in political life may as yet save the day. No, it’s not youth unemployment-at least not in the immediate future. Right now this is still a grave threat to the political establishment, and BDP and Government Enclave are not Botswana.

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