BDP targets UDC over Gaborone Bus Rank closure
Laone Choeunyane | Monday January 19, 2026 09:32
As such, the choice of venue was deliberate. Throughout the rally, speakers framed the bus rank as an economic lifeline for transport operators, vendors and small-scale traders, arguing that its alleged closure would destroy informal jobs and deepen hardship for working-class families.
However, the keynote speaker, Palelo Motaosane, was absent from the rally, with no explanation offered to supporters in attendance. The programme proceeded with speeches by John Siele, Tumiso Rakgare, Tumisang Healy and Mabuse Pule.
Rakgare anchored his address on the importance of the informal sector, using his personal background to illustrate how such spaces sustain families and create opportunities. He told the crowd that he was raised by a mother who ran a tuckshop, an informal business that supported their household.
“My mother had a tuckshop in front of Trade World. I would walk through the bus rank on my way to buy mogodu and bones from Senn Foods, boarding a combi right here and going to Tlokweng. I would pass through the rank yet again on my way back to help my mother at her tuckshop,” Rakgare said.
He argued that the bus rank was more than a transport hub, describing it as a vital artery of informal commerce that enables survival and social mobility for many families. Rakgare warned that closing the rank would choke off opportunities for people who depend on daily trade and commuter traffic.
Speakers accused the UDC government of failing to care about ordinary people, claiming that this disregard was evident in its alleged plans to close the bus rank and hand it over to a wealthy businessman, Zunaid Moti. The accusations drew loud reactions from the crowd, with the rank portrayed as being sacrificed for elite interests at the expense of informal traders.
Pule shifted the focus to governance and constitutional issues, criticising the proposed constitutional amendment bill that seeks to establish a constitutional court. Pule claimed the UDC government under President Duma Boko intends to use the court to expand executive power. He argued that Boko had several cases he wished to pursue and that the court could be used to overturn or overwrite decisions of the Court of Appeal through executive influence.
“The constitutional court is a big institution, even bigger than the Court of Appeal,” Pule told the rally. He added that the public was not being adequately informed about the implications of such a major legal change. “We believe that Batswana should be educated on the constitutional court, its functions, and then it should be voted on by Batswana through a referendum,” he said.
The rally was punctuated by repeated heckling from sections of the crowd, with some attendees interrupting speakers and reminding them of the BDP’s own past failures in government, reflecting lingering public frustration.
While the event marked the BDP’s first Gaborone region rally of the year, it was the alleged closure of the bus rank that dominated proceedings, giving the opposition party a tangible issue to rally around and turning a local infrastructure dispute into a broader political contest over livelihoods, power and governance.