The cost of election campaign (Part I)
Leinanyana Tsiane | Friday June 20, 2014 17:02
Salakae said that what makes the matter worse is when there are private companies and individuals who are willing to fund them, but are scared. This is because they do not want to be seen to be associating with the opposition and risk sabotaging any business opportunities offered by the powers that be. Most, Salakae has learnt, do not want to bite the hand that feeds them lest they go hungry and become poor.
He said this is a sad situation because they have to struggle in order to have well organised launches and traverse their constituency for campaigns.
On his recent launch Salakae said: “We had to book and pay for accommodation for some of the invited delegates to the launch. This is not as easy as some people may think. And this does not end here. Imagine the branding and how much it costs,” said Salakae.
He revealed that for the launch alone they printed T-shirts, branded their vehicles and the party parted with more than P20,000 for these.
“This is just the tip of the iceberg. Each councillor branded t-shirts and each forked out P2,000 and a beast. We also hired tents and chairs for the event and you can just imagine the money we used from our pockets. All-in-all we used about P100,000 for our launch,” he revealed.
Reluctant to disclose how much he is going to pop out from his pocket for this campaign, Salakae said he has to fuel vehicles every time he traverses his vast constituency. For his recent travel to Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR), they had to carry fuel amounting to P9,000 and still this was not enough to get them back to Gantsi as they had to re-fuel at Letlhakeng.
“I have my campaign team, which I have to take care of every time they go out to campaign for me. I fuel their vehicles and buy them food because that is just about the only thing I can afford now. This has dried up my pockets, but I still have a long way to go. I really appreciate the little that some of my friends have supported me with,” he added.He decried lack of centralised funding for all the parties and said it is unfortunate that all the opposition parties are pitted against the financially lubricated Botswana Democratic Party (BDP). He, however, said they will continue to advocate for state funding for all parties. He said comparatively the rural and urban areas are just the same on many other factors besides the issue of fuel that they have to use in the remote regions. He said the rural area is too demanding because of the fuel consumption and the bad state of roads.
He said people in CKGR are living under harsh conditions and they are poverty stricken.
“When you visit CKGR be ready to have a few extra coins to part with. Those people ask for money just to buy the smallest packet of sugar. And just by looking at their situation you are forced to give them money. They even ask for water that you are carrying because they do not have any supply. So that is where we differ from the urban areas. They do not have such heartbreaking challenges,” said Salakae.Salakae said that they never had any marketing strategy in place because of the financial constraints, not even for advertising because of the challenges in front of them.