Minorities under threat from male traditionalists

This country has reached an important stage in its development - a point where it has to choose between a liberal, non-sexist, non-racial, multi-ethnic direction, but it seems to be shirking the call to this challenge.

The recent report by leaders of Botswana Council of Churches (BCC) and some members of Dikgosi on so-called moral regeneration is a case in point. Instead of bringing together a group of diverse religions, age groups, ethnic groups and even civil society groups, government decided that the arbiters of social values, perceived or real, could be located in the house of Dikgosi and at the offices of the BCC. This nation is a secular state. This is not a dream or a wish from this newspaper. This is a fact, according to the Constitution at least. No matter how strongly one may feel about a particular religion this state is not a Christian state. Neither is it founded on any religious principle. This is a fact that cannot be affected by the government of the day. It is the very foundation of this state. We do not say this because we have any reason to doubt the sincerity of those among us who are Christians. No, we say this because the founders of this nation deemed it necessary to keep religion out of our political landscape for a good reason. We have to learn how incorporating religious fundamentalism into the political arena poses problems for religious minorities.However, this is not the only problem we have with this new direction this country seems to be taking.  It would seem that those who have the reins seem to have a general propensity to disregard the inherent variety of interests and even views that a society like Botswana has. Recent pronouncements on the youth, indicating a culture of talking down to young people is the very height of this new political culture. We are told that young people are the very embodiment of evil in this society, in the meantime there is no attempt to harness the inherently varied input of the youth before coming up with these pronouncements. The recent study on social values left out a majority of ethnic groups, because by its very nature this society is multiethnic and we know that our ethnic make-up has not been addressed by the representation at the Ntlo ya Dikgosi.

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Editor's Comment
Congratulations Anicia Gaothuse!

The contest had 10 beautiful young girls as finalists and unfortunately only one could wear the crown.The judges picked Anicia Gaothuse. To all those who feel their contestant should have won ahead of Anicia for whatever reason, hardly; the judges found Anicia to be the best among the best, so desist from disrespecting our newly crowned queen on social media or anywhere else, for that matter! Each of the 10 beautiful young women had supporters...

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