A betrayal of Batswana
Mmegi Editor | Tuesday June 24, 2014 17:44
An institution funded and sustained by taxpayers has wasted millions of Pula on what can only be described as a costly and imprudent gamble.
At the centre of the morass, however, lies the bitterest pill for Batswana to swallow; the betrayal of the One Man, One Beast campaign.
Widely regarded as the greatest example of national citizen cooperation, the Motho le Motho Kgomo campaign involved Batswana from all walks of life sacrificing their meagre assets to build the University of Botswana.
The campaign is still cited across Africa as an example of a nation pulling together for a common good and in the spirit of a shared future.
The Motho le Motho Kgomo campaign was an exercise in nation-building, as it brought together diverse tongues and creeds for the most noble of all goals: the safeguarding of this country’s sovereignty through the higher independent education of our children.
The old logo was indeed an accurate and simple reflection of this campaign and its objectives.
The betrayal that is the millions of Pula wasted on a needless revision of the logo, turns sinister when one considers that the wastage was seemingly intended to obliterate the University’s history by changing the logo.
The new logo was barely recognisable as a University brand and in fact, was purposefully designed to be minimalistic and thus unreflective of the Motho le Motho Kgomo campaign and spirit.
It boggles the mind why principals at the University thought the logo revision was even a sane idea or what about the old logo they found so unbearable. The world over, universities such as Cambridge and Oxford still use the same brands they did when they were first established hundreds of years ago.
In fact, the Oxford University’s coat of arms has been used since the 1400s without variation and without the wastage of millions of British taxpayer funds on a revision which is later overturned.
The University of Botswana debacle is a reminder of the imprudence that can set in and take place within public institutions when the history of those institutions is forgotten. It is a reminder that a laissez faire approach to the allocation of priority and use of public funds can never be allowed in Botswana.
One commentator, who worked at the University of Botswana has asked “what kind of a university throws away its history?” “What kind of children bury their parent’s legacy?”
We ask that all citizens pressure their political representatives into enquiring about the behind-the-scenes’ motivations of the logo change. We need to understand why some authorities sought to bury the history of our great institution.
Today’s thought
“Study the past if you would define the future.”
- Confucius